The benzodiazepine receptor: the pharmacology of emotion

Anxiety seems to be an inherent and perhaps necessary component of civilization. However, the biological basis of anxiety has always been as obscure as the definition of anxiety itself. The importance of anxiety to our mental well-being was noted by Freud (1933) who considered it a "nodal point". As in the case of schizophrenia, there have been as many hypotheses to explain anxiety as there have been investigators with different techniques for studying it. The benzodiazepines, introduced clinically in 1960, are now the most widely-used anxiolytic drugs. From the time of their introduction, it was felt that an explanation of the mode of action of benzodiazepines might shed considerable light on the basis of anxiety. The discovery, in 1977, of a specific benzodiazepine receptor, uniquely localized in the CNS, was the major turning point in this search.