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Updated: Jul 31, 2025

The Successive Alleys Test of Anxiety in Mice and Rats
Published on: June 17, 2013
Hominin life history, pathological complexity, and the evolution of anxiety
Walter Veit1,2, Heather Browning3
1School of History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia WC2A 2AE, UK wrwveit@gmail.com; https://walterveit.com/.
Abstract:
In order to address why the number of patients suffering from anxiety and depression are seemingly exploding in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries, it is sensible to look at the evolution of human fearfulness responses. Here, we draw on Veit's pathological complexity framework to advance Grossmann's goal of re-characterizing human fearfulness as an adaptive trait.
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