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Abstract
Measuring anxiety-like behaviour in mice has been mostly undertaken using a few classical
animal models of anxiety such as the elevated plus-maze, the light/dark choice or
the open-field tests. All these procedures are based upon the exposure of subjects
to unfamiliar aversive places. Anxiety can also be elicited by a range of threats
such as predator exposure. Furthermore, the concepts of "state" and "trait" anxiety
have been proposed to differentiate anxiety that the subject experiences at a particular
moment of time and that is increased by the presence of an anxiogenic stimulus, and
anxiety that does not vary from moment to moment and is considered to be an "enduring
feature of an individual". Thus, when assessing the behaviour of mice, it is necessary
to increase the range of behavioural paradigms used, including animal models of "state"
and "trait" anxiety. In the last few years, many mice with targeted mutations have
been generated. Among them some have been proposed as animal models of pathological
anxiety, since they display high level of anxiety-related behaviours in classical
tests. However, it is important to emphasise that such mice are animal models of a
single gene dysfunction, rather than models of anxiety, per se. Inbred strains of
mice, such as the BALB/c line, which exhibits spontaneously elevated anxiety appear
to be a more suitable model of pathological anxiety.