Anxiety Like Behavior
Anxiety Like Behavior - Related Videos
07:12
Use of the Open Field Maze to Measure Locomotor and Anxiety-like Behavior in Mice
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Cited by 1462 •
2015
A protocol is provided to use an Open Field Maze to access general locomotor activity, anxiety and emotionality in a laboratory mouse model.
07:47
Anxiety Testing
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2023
Anxiety is a commonly observed behavioral disorder that stems from fear. It is described as increased restlessness, or unpleasant feelings of fear over anticipated events. Experimenters often use rodent models to better understand anxiety disorders in humans. They use different paradigms, like exposing rodents to bright spaces or loud sounds, which are known to induce fear. These tests combined with other interventions such as surgery or drug-administration may assist researchers in pinpointing...
08:17
Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
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Cited by 7 •
2017
This protocol demonstrates how to measure anxiety-potentiated startle during the Sternberg Working Memory paradigm.
05:52
Hyponeophagia: A Measure of Anxiety in the Mouse
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Cited by 39 •
2011
Mice and rats, due to their innate cautiousness, are initially slow in consuming a novel food, particularly in a novel place. This hyponeophagia can readily be measured in the laboratory, even though laboratory animals are much less anxious than their wild...
05:05
The Successive Alleys Test of Anxiety in Mice and Rats
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Cited by 49 •
2013
The plus-maze measures anxiety-like behaviour in rodents. There are two opposite closed and two opposite open arms; anxious rodents avoid the open arms. The central area is neither completely open nor closed, so time spent here is ambiguous and difficult to interpret. Here a modification of the plus-maze protocol eliminating this area is described.
FAQs
The central interpretive principle is that behavior reflects competition between environmental threat and the motivation to explore. A threatening context may reduce exploration, increase time in protected areas, or promote freezing and risk assessment. Researchers therefore treat these responses as patterns whose meaning depends on the challenge presented, rather than as isolated indicators of one biological process.
Useful observations include exploratory activity, time spent in protected regions, freezing, and risk-assessment actions. Together, these measures describe how an organism allocates behavior between investigating an environment and avoiding potential danger. Comparing several responses can provide a more informative profile than relying on a single behavioral outcome from one assay.
Reduced exploration does not necessarily reflect heightened threat sensitivity. Differences in locomotion may limit an animal's ability to move through the assay, while altered sensory function can change how it detects or responds to environmental cues. These factors can therefore influence apparent anxiety-like behavior and should be considered when evaluating behavioral results.
Standardized behavioral challenges provide an outcome measure for testing how biological variables alter responses to potential threat. Researchers can compare behavior under different stress conditions, examine effects associated with neural circuits or genes, and evaluate pharmacological treatments through changes in exploration, protection-seeking, freezing, or risk assessment. The behavioral readout links these influences to observable animal responses.
A typical assessment exposes an organism to a standardized challenge, such as an open or elevated space, and records defined behavioral responses. Investigators then examine exploration, time in protected areas, freezing, or risk assessment within that context. Interpreting the resulting pattern requires attention to the specific environment and to factors that could alter movement or sensory responsiveness.
Complementary measures are important whenever a behavioral change could have more than one explanation. Pairing the assay with additional behavioral or physiological observations helps distinguish threat-related responses from effects linked to locomotion, sensory function, stress, or experimental context. This combined approach supports more cautious conclusions about the biology underlying the observed behavior.