This adaptive anxiety can be reliably induced in healthy individuals in the laboratory by exposing them to unpredictable threat of rare electrical shocks. It occurs naturally in every individual-when walking down a dark alley at night, for instance. Anxiety enhances vigilance to threat and primes defense mechanisms ( 9), which allows the individual to react faster in dangerous situations. This experimental approach is possible because anxiety, perhaps uniquely among psychiatric symptoms, is also an adaptive behavior with a benefit to survival. More precisely, using the same techniques to induce anxiety in healthy individuals and animal models should enable us to both better understand the neurobiological basis of anxiety and provide an intermediate route to screen the efficacy of candidate interventions prior to full clinical trial ( 8). It has recently been argued, therefore, that models of anxiety (as defined by aversive anticipation and apprehension of perceived potential but unpredictable threats) in healthy humans could help us bridge this gap and facilitate therapeutic progress ( 7). Response rates to existing treatments usually range between 40% and 60% ( 4), which leaves a large number of people with debilitating symptoms and a high probability of relapse ( 5).ĭevelopment of new treatments for symptoms of anxiety has stagnated for several decades ( 6), however, partly as a result of the difficulty of establishing robust translational links between models of fear and anxiety in rodents and clinical anxiety in humans. Anxiety disorders constitute the most prevalent mental health condition ( 1), with a lifetime prevalence of 17% ( 2), resulting in significant individual and social impairment ( 1) and a considerable overall burden of disease, ranking ninth among causes of years lived with disability in the world in 2015 ( 3).
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