BDNF and Anxiety: In summary, our results show that (a) the maternal social defeat paradigm may reliably imitate human depressive-like symptoms; (b) the maternal rats experiencing SDS pass their anxiety- and depressive-like behaviours on to their offspring; and (c) the abnormal behaviours observed in the offspring may involve HPA axis regulatory hormones, the monoaminergic system, and changes in transcriptional regulation factors such CREB and BDNF.