Blanchard R J, Blanchard D C, Weiss S M
Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu 96822.
Alcohol. 1990 Sep-Oct;7(5):375-81. doi: 10.1016/0741-8329(90)90019-9.
Two tests, components of an Anxiety/Defense Test Battery, have been designed to measure risk assessment, inhibition of nondefensive behaviors, and movement arrest, all of which occur in the natural defense patterns of rats to threatening stimuli. In these tests, which used a nonpainful threat stimulus (a cat), ethanol (0.6 and 1.2 g/kg) increased two risk assessment behaviors on an initial test day, and produced a wider pattern of changes in all three patterns on a retest (no cat) day, 5 days later. The pattern of results obtained is compatible with a view that defensive behaviors occur in a fixed sequence with the decreasing intensity of threat an important factor in the transition from one defensive behavior to the next, and with ethanol at these doses producing a mild and relatively nonspecific anxiolytic effect. Comparison of male and female subjects on these tasks also suggested that females are more defensive than males, a finding which agrees with a variety of human anxiety studies but is at variance with previous rodent literature.
焦虑/防御测试组中的两项测试旨在测量风险评估、对非防御行为的抑制以及行动停止，这些情况均出现在大鼠面对威胁刺激时的自然防御模式中。在这些使用非疼痛性威胁刺激（一只猫）的测试中，乙醇（0.6克/千克和1.2克/千克）在初次测试日增加了两种风险评估行为，并在5天后的复测（无猫）日使所有三种模式的变化范围更大。所获得的结果模式符合这样一种观点，即防御行为按固定顺序发生，威胁强度的降低是从一种防御行为转变为下一种防御行为的一个重要因素，并且这些剂量的乙醇会产生轻微且相对非特异性的抗焦虑作用。对这些任务中雄性和雌性受试者的比较还表明，雌性比雄性更具防御性，这一发现与各种人类焦虑研究一致，但与先前的啮齿动物文献不同。
