Behavioural anxiety tests in non-human animals are used for anxiolytic drug discovery, and to investigate the neurobiology of threat avoidance. Over the past decade, several of them were translated to humans with three clinically relevant goals: to assess potential efficacy of candidate treatments in healthy humans; to develop diagnostic tests or biomarkers; and to elucidate the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders. In this review, we scrutinise these promises and compare seven anxiety tests that are validated across species: five approach-avoidance conflict tests, unpredictable shock anticipation, and the social intrusion test in children. Regarding the first goal, three tests appear suitable for anxiolytic drug screening in humans. However, they have not become part of the drug development pipeline and achieving this may require independent confirmation of predictive validity and cost-effectiveness. Secondly, two tests have shown potential to measure clinically relevant individual differences, but their psychometric properties, predictive value, and clinical applicability need to be clarified. Finally, cross-species research has not yet revealed new evidence that the physiology of healthy human behaviour in anxiety tests relates to the physiology of anxiety symptoms in patients. To summarise, cross-species anxiety tests could be rendered useful for drug screening and for development of diagnostic instruments. Using these tests for aetiology research in healthy humans or animals needs to be queried and may turn out to be unrealistic.

非人类动物的行为焦虑测试用于发现抗焦虑药物，并研究避免威胁的神经生物学。在过去的十年中，其中一些被转化为具有三个临床相关目标的人类：评估候选治疗对健康人类的潜在疗效；开发诊断测试或生物标志物；并阐明焦虑症的病理生理学。在这篇综述中，我们仔细审查了这些承诺，并比较了七种跨物种验证的焦虑测试：五种接近-回避冲突测试、不可预测的冲击预期和儿童的社交入侵测试。关于第一个目标，三个测试似乎适用于人类的抗焦虑药物筛选。然而，它们尚未成为药物开发管道的一部分，实现这一目标可能需要独立确认预测有效性和成本效益。其次，两项测试已显示出测量临床相关个体差异的潜力，但它们的心理测量特性、预测价值和临床适用性需要澄清。最后，跨物种研究尚未揭示新的证据表明焦虑测试中健康人类行为的生理学与患者焦虑症状的生理学有关。总而言之，跨物种焦虑测试可用于药物筛选和诊断仪器的开发。需要质疑将这些测试用于健康人类或动物的病因学研究，结果可能不切实际。