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Abstract
Anxiety disorders are classified according to symptoms, time course and therapeutic response. Concurrently, the experimental analysis of defensive behavior has identified three strategies of defense that are shared by different animal species, triggered by situations of potential, distal and proximal predatory threat, respectively. The first one consists of cautious exploration of the environment for risk assessment. The associated emotion is supposed to be anxiety and its pathology, Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The second is manifested by oriented escape or by behavioral inhibition, being related to normal fear and to Specific Phobias, as disorders. The third consists of disorganized flight or complete immobility, associated to dread and Panic Disorder. Among conspecific interactions lies a forth defense strategy, submission, that has been related to normal social anxiety (shyness) and to Social Anxiety Disorder. In turn, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder do not seem to be directly related to innate defense reactions. Such evolutionary approach offers a reliable theoretical framework for the study of the biological determinants of anxiety disorders, and a sound basis for psychiatric classification.
Highlights
Anxiety disorders were once merged within the vague concept of neurosis, but are divided into distinct nosological classes, characterized by different symptoms, time courses and therapeutic responses (World Health Organization 1992, American Psychiatric Association 1994)
The results reviewed below are organized according to the proposal by Blanchard and Blanchard (1988) that antipredatory defense is hierarchically organized in levels of defense that go from risk assessment, to escape, tense immobility, defensive threat and, defensive attack
The uppermost male in the colony hierarchy cautiously walks toward one of the doors keeping the belly in touch with the floor and, in several occasions, pokes the head out of the hole followed by rapid retreat
Summary
Anxiety disorders were once merged within the vague concept of neurosis, but are divided into distinct nosological classes, characterized by different symptoms, time courses and therapeutic responses (World Health Organization 1992, American Psychiatric Association 1994). One of the main contributions of ethoexperimental behavior analysis has been the identification of a basic set of defensive strategies that are common to several species ( genera) that have been associated to human anxiety and related emotions. In the present article we review reported studies on defensive strategies displayed by non-human mammals, and discuss the extrapolation of the obtained results to human beings, with a particular emphasis on the neurobiology of anxiety disorders.
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