Translational neuroscience and anxiety disorders

An approach to the study of psychiatric illnesses in which findings from basic a nd preclinical research are “translated” into clinically-relevant concepts tha t can then guide clinical research became possible in the late twentieth century . The explosion of knowledge from the basic neuroscience laboratory, improvements in techniques for studying the molecular biology of the brain, and the introduc tion of increasingly sophisticated neuroimaging technologies for human and anima l research all made translational research in psychiatry an exciting new possibi lity. At first glance, anxiety disorders would seem to be an excellent example o f a psychiatric disorder for the application of translational neuroscience appro aches because excellent animal models of fear exist and have been extensively ch aracterized. However, there is a great deal of controversy about the relationshi p between “fear” and “anxiety.” Many consider them to be separate concepts: fear represents an automatic response to a real danger whereas anxiety is a resp onse to indirect, exaggerated, or even imaged threats. If this notion is correct , then it is difficult to think of an animal having “anxiety” as opposed to fe ar and the translational approach becomes suspect.