Handbook of Anxiety and Fear

This Handbook brings together and integrates comprehensively the core approaches to fear and anxiety. Its four sections: Animal models; neural systems; pharmacology; and clinical approaches, provide a range of perspectives that interact to produce new light on these important and sometimes dysfunctional emotions. Fear and anxiety are analyzed as patterns that have evolved on the basis of their adaptive functioning in response to threat. These patterns are stringently selected, providing a close fit with environmental situations and events; they are highly conservative across mammalian species, producing important similarities, along with some systematic differences, in their human expression in comparison to that of nonhuman mammals. These patterns are described, with attention to both adaptive and maladaptive components, and related to new understanding of neuroanatomic, neurotransmitter, and genetic mechanisms. Although chapters in the volume acknowledge important differences in views of fear and anxiety stemming from animal vs. human research, the emphasis of the volume is on a search for an integrated view that will facilitate the use of animal models of anxiety to predict drug response in people; on new technologies that will enable direct evaluation of biological mechanisms in anxiety disorders; and on strengthening the analysis of anxiety disorders as biological phenomena.

• Integrates animal and human research on fear and anxiety
• Presents emerging and developing fields of human anxiety research including imaging of anxiety disorders, the genetics of anxiety, the pharmacology of anxiolysis, recent developments in classification of anxiety disorders, linking these to animal work
• Covers basic research on innate and conditioned responses to threat
• Presents work from the major laboratories, on fear learning and extinction
• Reviews research on an array of neurotransmitter and neuromodulator systems related to fear and anxiety
• Compares models, and neural systems for learned versus unlearned responses to threat
• Relates the findings to the study, diagnostics, and treatment of anxiety disorders, the major source of mental illness in modern society (26 % of Americans are affected by anxiety disorders!)

Section 1. Introduction

Introduction to the Handbook on Fear and Anxiety
Robert Blanchard, D. Caroline Blanchard, Guy Griebel and David Nutt

Section 2. Animal models of Anxiety, Fear and Defense

Theoretical approaches to the modeling of anxiety in animals
Neil McNaughton and Hélio Zangrossi Jr.,

The use of conditioning tasks to model fear and anxiety
Michael S. Fanselow and Ravikumar Ponnusamy

Extinction of fear: from animal studies to clinical interventions
Karyn M. Myers and Michael Davis

Defensive behaviors, fear and anxiety
D. Caroline Blanchard and Robert Blanchard

Unconditioned models of fear and anxiety
Yoav Litvin, Nathan S. Pentkowski, Roger L. Pobbe, D. Caroline Blanchard and Robert J. Blanchard

Section 3. Neural Systems for Anxiety, Fear, and Defense

Brain mechanisms of Pavlovian and instrumental aversive conditioning
Christopher K. Cain and Joseph E. LeDoux

Neural systems activated in response to predators and partial predator stimuli
Newton Sabino Canteras

A behavioral and neural systems comparison of unconditioned and conditioned defensive behavior
Newton S. Canteras and D. Caroline Blanchard

Section 4. The Pharmacology of Anxiety, Fear, and Defense

Peptide receptor ligands to treat anxiety disorders
Thomas Steckler

Subtype-selective GABAA/benzodiazepine receptor ligands for the treatment of anxiety disorders
James K. Rowlett

Modulation of anxiety behaviors by 5-HT-interacting drugs
Francisco Silveira Guimarães, Antonio Pádua Carobrez and Frederico Guilherme Graeff

The glutamatergic system as a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of anxiety disorders
John F. Cryan and Kumlesh K. Dev

The endocannabinoid system and anxiety responses
Marco Bortolato and Daniele Piomelli

Genetic factors underlying anxiety-behaviour: a meta-analysis of rodent studies involving targeted mutations of neurotransmission genes
Catherine Belzung, Samuel Leman and Guy Griebel

The pharmacology of anxiolysis
Andrew Holmes

Section 5. Handbook of Fear and Anxiety:

Clinical and Experimental Considerations
Phenomenology of anxiety disorders
David J. Nutt, Berta Garcia de Miguel and Simon J.C. Davies

How effective are current drug treatments for anxiety disorders, and how could they be improved?
David S. Baldwin and Matthew J. Garner

Experimental models: panic and fear
Gabriel Esquivel, Koen Schruers and Eric Griez

Principles and findings from human imaging of anxiety disorders
Andrea L. Malizia and David Nutt

Stress hormones and anxiety disorders
Elizabeth A. Young, James L. Abelson and Israel Liberzon

The genetics of human anxiety disorders
Eduard Maron, John M. Hettema and Jakov Shlik