Anxiety is a phenomenon that has many different manifestations. In order to test whether or not agents targeted to treat anxiety may have the properties necessary to treat differing types of anxiety, we have studied a 8-OH DPAT,
buspirone,
LY228729,
chlordiazepoxide and
pentobarbital on three different punished responding procedures in pigeons. Procedure one was a fairly standard multiple FR30 FR30 punished responding model where responding into he punished component was suppressed by electric
shock to 7-10% of responding in the unpunished component. Procedure two was similar except that responding during the punished component was suppressed more severely to 1-3% of control, using increased levels of
shock. Procedure three was a VI30 schedule as the unpunished component, with concomitant FR5
shock in a second component, and concomitant FR20
shock in the third component. 5HT(1A) agonists, 8-OH DPAT,
buspirone and
LY228729 produced the typical large increases in punished responding in procedure one, were substantially less effective when
shock levels were increased in procedure two, and produced differential results which were likely due to the schedule in procedure three. The more traditional
anxiolytics,
chlordiazepoxide and
pentobarbital, were consistently effective across all three punished responding procedures. These results would seem to indicate that 5HT(1A) agonists may not be as broadly efficacious as traditional
anxiolytics, and that the state or severity of anxiety may be an important variable to predict efficacy for 5HT(1A) agonists.