Abstract
Anxiety disorders (AD) comprise a broad range of psychiatric conditions, including general anxiety (GAD) and specific phobias. For the last decades, the use of animal models of anxiety has offered important insights into the understanding of the association between these psychopathologies. Here, we investigate whether Carioca high- and low-conditioned freezing rats (CHF and CLF, respectively), a GAD animal model of anxiety, show similar high- and low-freezing behavioral phenotypes for cued auditory fear conditioning. Adult CHF (n = 16), CLF (n = 16) and normal age-matched Wistar rats (control, CTL, n = 16) were tested in a classical auditory-cued fear conditioning paradigm over 3 days (Tone + Shock and Tone only groups, n = 8 per treatment). Freezing responses were measured and used as evidence of fear conditioning. Overall, both CHF and CLF rats, as well as CTL animals displayed fear conditioning to the auditory CS. However, CLF animals showed a rapid extinction to the auditory conditioned stimulus compared to CHF and CTL rats. We discuss these findings in the context of the behavioral and neuronal differences observed in rodent lines of high and low anxiety traits.
Highlights
Anxiety disorders (AD) are among the most prevalent and debilitating psychiatric conditions (Baxter et al, 2013), afflicting more than 250 million people worldwide (World Health Organization, 2017)
Longitudinal data indicate that AD is linked to a greater chance of developing depression, which in turn is associated with an increased risk of death by suicide (Sareen et al, 2005; Simon, 2009; Meier et al, 2016)
A separate repeated-measures analysis of variance (rANOVA) performed for Tone + Shock groups indicated that freezing responses after CS acquisition were significantly greater compared to their respective baseline values (Figures 1A,D; Time Interval: F(2.3,57.5) = 114.7, P < 0.001)
Summary
Anxiety disorders (AD) are among the most prevalent and debilitating psychiatric conditions (Baxter et al, 2013), afflicting more than 250 million people worldwide (World Health Organization, 2017). Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; Tyrer and Baldwin, 2006) and specific phobia (Eaton et al, 2018) are two of the most common AD (Wolitzky-Taylor et al, 2010; Steel et al, 2014). The former is characterized primarily by a persistent and uncontrollable state of wariness, whereas the latter is marked by apprehension and persistent fear towards specific objects or situations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Understanding the relationship between GAD and specific phobia at the neural and behavioral levels can provide further insight into the neurobiological underpinnings of these disorders
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