Risk Assessment and Animal Models of Anxiety

Abstract

Analysis of the pattern of defensive behaviours in semi-natural situations suggests a long-duration process in which high level freezing/movement arrest gradually gives way to active risk assessment activities, terminating with a gradual return to nondefensive behaviours. Risk assessment is conceptualized as the key feature in this process, with the information obtained by these oriented scanning and exploratory activities providing feedback to reduce the subject’s initial high level of defensiveness. Risk assessment measures derived from this analysis are selectively responsive to classic anxiolytics. Examination of a range of commonly used measures of anxiolytic action suggest that many of these contain clear elements of the risk assessment process. Furthermore, variation in the results obtained in these tests might be profitably analyzed in terms of some of the features of risk assessment and other aspects of the defense pattern seen to partial or potential threat stimuli.