ANTICONFLICT EFFECTS OF 5HT(1A) AGONISTS IN PIGEONS ARE DEPENDENT ON THE LEVEL OF RESPONSE SUPPRESSION

Anxiety is a phenomenon that has many different manifestations. In ord er to test whether or not agents targeted to treat anxiety may have th e properties necessary to treat differing types of anxiety, we have st udied a 8-OH DPAT, buspirone LY228729, chlordiazepoxide and pentobarbi tal on three different punished responding procedures in pigeons. Proc edure one was a fairly standard multiple FB30 FR30 punished responding model where responding in the punished component was suppressed by el ectric shock to 7-10% of responding in the unpunished component. Proce dure two was similar except that responding during the punished compon ent was suppressed more severely to 1-3% of control, using increased l evels of shock. Procedure three was a V130 schedule as the unpunished component, with concomitant FR5 shock in a second component, and conco mitant FR20 shock in the third component. 5HT(1A) agonists, 8-OH DPAT, buspirone and LY228729 produced the typical large increases in punish ed responding in procedure one, were substantially less effective when shock levels were increased in procedure two, and produced differenti al results which were likely due to the schedule in procedure three. T he more traditional anxiolytics, chlordiazepoxide and pentobarbital, w ere consistently effective across all three punished responding proced ures. These results would seem to indicate that 5HT(1A) agonists may n ot be as broadly efficacious as traditional anxiolytics, and that the state or severity of anxiety may be an important variable to predict e fficacy for 5HT(1A) agonists.