The inhibitory effect of diazepam on conditioned defensive burying is reversed by picrotoxin.

The ability of picrotoxin to reverse the effect of diazepam was studied using the conditioned defensive burying paradigm. Although picrotoxin alone had no detectable effect on the conditioned defensive burying response of rats, picrotoxin was able to reverse the usual inhibitory effect of diazepam on defensive burying. These results suggest that the anxiolytic effect of diazepam may depend upon the integrity of GABAergic neural systems.