Floatation-REST (Reduced Environmental Stimulation Therapy) reduces sensory input to the nervous system through the act of floating supine in a pool of water saturated with Epsom salt. The float experience is calibrated so that sensory signals from visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, thermal, tactile, vestibular, gravitational and proprioceptive channels are minimized, as is most movement a...

To study anxiolytic and antidepressant effect of Astaxanthin as an adjuvant to standard drug.In this study, to investigate the effects of astaxanthin on anxiety and depression,we performed some behavioural trials including elevated plus maze test, hole-board test, forced swim test, and tail suspension test.Astaxanthin ( 3 mg/kg/day for 15 days, orally) significantly increased the time spent in ...

Zebrafish are a widely utilised animal model in developmental genetics, and owing to recent advances in our understanding of zebrafish behaviour, their utility as a comparative model in behavioural neuroscience is beginning to be realised. One widely reported behavioural measure is the novel tank-diving assay, which has been often cited as a test of anxiety and stress reactivity. Despite its wi...

Grooming is an important part of rodent behavioural repertoire, representing a complex hierarchically ordered cephalo-caudal sequence of patterns sensitive to stress and various drugs. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is involved in the regulation of both anxiety and grooming behaviours. This study investigated the predictive validity of grooming behavioural microstructure as a marker of anxiety,...

Milk proteins are the main components of everyday feeding and demonstrate a promising potential to change the mental condition. However, the effects of milk proteins after prolonged use remain poorly understood. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of two whey proteins (alpha-lactalbumin (alpha-lac) and native whey) with casein on social and individual behaviour in mice. Duri...

TP-7 is a synthetic analogue of tuftsin. It has a structure of tuftsin, to which three natural L-amino-acids Pro-Gly-Pro are attached. This heptapeptide improves learning and memorization and causes antidepressant and anxiolytic effect. It is possible to use TP-7 in the future to optimize cognitive functions and as a potential new anxioselective, fast-acting and easy-dosed drug. Therefore, it w...

OBJECTIVE The present review provides a brief introduction into the endocannabinoid system and discusses main strategies of pharmacological interventions. METHOD We have reviewed the literature relating to the endocannabinoid system and its pharmacology; both original and review articles written in English were considered. DISCUSSION Cannabinoids are a group of compounds present in Cannabis...

Hippocampal oscillations recorded under urethane anesthesia are proposed to be modulated by anxiolytics. All classes of clinically effective anxiolytics were reported to decrease the frequency of urethane theta; however, recent findings raise concerns about the direct correlation of anxiolysis and the frequency of hippocampal theta. Here, we took advantage of our two inbred mouse strains displa...

The development of animal models of anxiety is of great importance to detect potential anxiolytic drugs and study the anxiety phenomenon. The selection of anxious and non anxious rats in animal may represent a good procedure to help study rats behavior when tested in animal models. The present study aimed to investigate the differences among rats selected in an elevated plus maze test. Rats wer...

The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of bulbectomy and acute administration of anxiolytic drugs (diazepam, 10 mg/kg; chlordiazepoxide, 10 mg/kg) on the behavior of both sham-operated and olfactory bulbectomized rats in two tests predictive of anxiolytic activity: plus-maze test and Vogel's conflict test. We investigated also the effect of flumazenil (10 mg/kg), a benzodiazepin...