Should you be scared? Ask a rodent!

A core component of behavioral research is the use of animal models; but how much can these models actually tell us? In order to know whether an experiment involving an animal model would be worthwhile, there must first be an evaluation of how closely the model reflects human behavior. This experiment sought to determine how well rat and mouse models of fear- and anxiety-related defense patterns reflected those of human defensive behaviors to threat scenarios.

The study collected data from 160 male and female undergraduate students who indicated their primary defensive response to each of 12 scenarios. The scenarios were designed specifically to reflect factors known to influence specific defensive behaviors in rodents. These factors included the magnitude of the threat, the escapability of the situation, the ambiguity of the threat stimulus; the distance between the threat and subject, and the presence of a hiding place. Upon comparing the human responses to the corresponding rodent responses, the researchers found strong evidence of the animal model being a viable model for defensive behaviors.

The more representative an animal model of a human characteristic is, the more likely that results of studies using this model will be more directly translatable to humans. These results indicate that the animal models used in this experiment are likely to be strong predictors of human responses to threatening stimuli. This results in more controlled, manageable experiments that will have fewer steps to go through in the process of applying the results to humans.

Blanchard, C., Hynd, A., Minke, K., Minemoto, T., & Blanchard, R. (2001). Human defensive behaviors to threat scenarios show parallels to fear- and anxiety-related defense patterns of non-human mammals. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 25(7–8), 761–770. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0149-7634(01)00056-2