Basal anxiety during an open field test is correlated with individual differences in contextually conditioned fear in mice

Fear conditioning has been used to study pathogenic mechanisms underlying anxiety disorders. Several studies have shown that humans with anxiety disorders exhibit strong fear responses during the acquisition of conditioned fear. However, there have been no studies investigating whether basal anxiety within the normal range is related to conditioned fear in rodents. We hypothesized that individual differences in conditioned fear are correlated to the basal anxiety level of each individual . To test this hypothesis, we measured the basal anxiety of mice of by using the elevated-plus maze and open field test and correlated these data with contextual freezing during xontextual fear conditioning.