Genetic Animal Models of Anxiety

Conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social phobia, specific phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder cause undue suffering and economic burden on a substantial portion of our society. The prevalence and serious debilitating effects of anxiety disorders increases the necessity for fast and efficacious understanding of the neurobiological pathways associated with these maladies. While the neural underpinnings of this spectrum may have been identified, further analysis is necessary to generate pharmacologically significant data. The development of new molecular genetics techniques applied towards the generation of specific knockout models with anxiety-like phenotypes have been instrumental to our understanding of anxiety spectrum disorders due to their specificity of effected targets. This chapter will discuss the individual anxiety spectrum disorders with a focus on the animal models displaying relevant phenotypes for neurobehavioral research.