The neuropsychology of anxiety.

This paper is a rough precis of a recent book (GRAY, 1982). It is concerned with the question: what are the brain structures which mediate the psychology as well as the neurology of anxiety? It is clear that, once you start asking questions about the brain, you have to work with animals for reasons that are familiar to everybody. But it is very difficult to start studying emotions in animals, because it is difficult to know what emotions animals experience and whether these are the same as the human emotions. So the first thing one has to look for is a kind of crutch or bridge to get you across from the human domain on one side to the animal domain on the other. Now in the case of anxiety we are quite fortunate in that there are certain drugs which are clinically very effective in controlling anxiety in human subjects. So one can take those drugs and apply them to animals to study their behavioral effects.