A Review of Behavioral Tests to Evaluate Different Types of Anxiety and Anti-anxiety Effects

Abstract

Behavioral tests are very useful to understand the Neuro-psychotic disease and also helpful in finding the treatment of the particular disease. Nowadays various tests are available to evaluate the anxiolytics effect of a new entity or even for comparative studies with the standard drug. As per the ethics, a new compound or drug believes to have possible pharmacological effects should be tested on animals before tested on humans which have similar physiology than humans. First, rats were used for behavioral test for evaluation of anti-anxiety drug but later on the various strain of mice were added for evaluation of anxiolytics because of better genetic possibilities than rats. In this review article, we have discussed the most commonly used behavioral tests used to evaluate the anti-anxiety effect. Anxiolytics are the agent which are used to elevate anxiety effect produced due to any cause. The various parameter will be undertaken for the better and precise evaluation of anxiolytics.

Keywords: Anxiety; Elevated plus maze; Marble-burying behavior; The hole-board test; The light and dark box; The open-field test.

Fig. 1

Classification of anxiety disorder.

Fig. 2

A view of elevated plus maze apparatus. Adapted from the article of Bourin (Dialogues Clin Neurosci 2015;17:295-303) [7].

Fig. 3

The light and dark box. Adapted from the article of Bourin (Dialogues Clin Neurosci 2015;17:295-303) [7].

Fig. 4

Top-view of marble-burying behaviour apparatus. Adapted from the article of Prajapati et al. (Pharmacogn Res 2011;3:62) [22].

Fig. 5

A view of hole-board apparatus.

Fig. 6

Open-field apparatus of different shapes.