The cardiovascular startle response: anxiety and the benzodiazepine receptor complex

Benzodiazepine receptor (BZR) agonists are prototypic anxiolytic agents, whereas BZR inverse agonists exert anxiogenic effects. The effects of these compounds offer a potentially important pharmacological model system to examine the central mechanisms of anxiety. In accord with its putative anxiogenic properties, we previously found that the BZR partial inverse agonist, FG 7142, enhances the cardiovascular defensive response to a nonsignal acoustic stimulus in rats. In contrast, we found in the present study that this agent attenuates both the somatic and cardiovascular components of the acoustic startle response. BZR agonists and inverse agonists are known to modulate the basal forebrain cortical cholinergic system, and we consider the potential involvement of this system in the disparate psychophysiological actions of FG 7142 and in anxiety states in general.