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Dissecting the Neural Circuitry of Fear
al0ha writes "Fear begins in your brain, and it is there — specifically in an almond-shaped structure called the amygdala — that it is controlled, processed, and let out of the gate to kick off the rest of the fear response. In this week's issue of the journal Nature, a research team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology has taken an important step toward understanding just how this kickoff occurs by beginning to dissect the neural circuitry of fear. In their paper (abstract), these scientists ... describe a microcircuit in the amygdala that controls, or 'gates,' the outflow of fear from that region of the brain. The microcircuit in question, [Professor David J. Anderson] explains, contains two subtypes of neurons that are antagonistic — have opposing functions — and that control the level of fear output from the amygdala by acting like a seesaw. 'Imagine that one end of a seesaw is weighted and normally sits on a garden hose, preventing water — in this analogy, the fear impulse — from flowing through it,' says Anderson. 'When a signal that triggers a fear response arrives, it presses down on the opposite end of the seesaw, lifting the first end off the hose and allowing fear, like water, to flow.' Once the flow of fear has begun, that impulse can be transmitted to other regions of the brain that control fearful behavior, such as freezing in place."
Please put your hand in this little box...
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I wonder if the repercussions of removing the amygdala completely would be catastrophic to the person. In a society where we don't necessarily have direct predators, would a fearless person be more bold and have less stress? I wouldn't mind a boost in either of those traits. :)
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Fear is the path to the dark side.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
I'm afraid I can't do that.
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
I wonder if they'll try the same techniques to study Autism?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
That's funny, I thought fear response was controlled by Fox News.
-Xoltri
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain
I bet this stuff is in part if not totally funded by the Homeland Security group of the US governmint. Just another tool in their belt of manipulation, go Team USA! Yah!
I wonder how this applies to worriers? Like the people afraid of every possible thing that could wrong. And what part of the brain controls more general fears like the fear of death?
//m
fear http://bluray.ign.com/articles/112/1120480p1.html
stupidity http://movies.ign.com/objects/481/481316.html
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Most people assume the prominent almond shaped structure in the brain is the amygdala. But the real amygdala stays in the background, pretending to be an innocuous assistant or something and communicates with the prominently placed fake amygdala through complex undetectable chemical signals. This is done for security and the protection of real amygdala. Only on very rare occasions when the fake amygdala is assasinated the real one comes forward and one realizes how well they have been fooled by these security protocols. So let us first make sure the scientists studied the real one.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Queen Amigdala, regulator of the Phantom Menace... There, mnemonic device sorted.
It keeps us from doing dangerous things. Its the response that needs to be modified. In some cases, the 'freeze' response can be retrained to be something more appropriate, like taking cover, assuming a defensive posture or running.
Fear is what keeps us from clicking that submit button before making a stupid .... [Oh crap!]
Have gnu, will travel.
That seesaw/garden hose analogy is really tortured. In fact, I think it could easily induce fear in the faint hearted.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
"Imagine that one end of a seesaw is weighted and normally sits on a garden hose, preventing water"
wouldn't another analogy be to say it's like a tap?
Wasn't that how pain works? I believe it was the prospect of death by Gom Jabbar that instills the fear in the subject.
Fear is good. Fear is healthy. Fear keeps you alive. A person without fear would rapidly become dead, as there would be nothing preventing them from taking crazy risks. And if you say someone can make a rational appraisal of risks, I am telling that a person doing such a rational appraisal will wander into traffic in their fearlessness while they are doing their cognitive calculations.
When people identify fear as a negative impulse, they are actually complaining about things that stupid people fear, which are usually artificial constructs, and are usually controlled by fearmongering demagogues spreading propaganda for political purposes. Yes, this is wrong, but fear is only a piece of that puzzle, and not even the lynchpin.
Fear itself is not wrong, only what stupid people fear is wrong. I have fears in my life, and I'm glad I do. It keeps me alive, it even motivates me. It would be a shame to disregard such potent neural circuitry just because of some political hangups that have nothing to do with you.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So how much would it cost to get them to re-direct my fear flow to the calm, deadly badass region of my brain?
Fear vs. Knowledge confusion. As a spiritual teacher once said - you don't _need_ fear to not put your hand in fire - just the knowledge and consciousness to apply the knowledge is sufficient.
But the pain was "illusionary", the test was about overcoming your fear and resisting the urge to remove your hand. Or that's how I remember it anyhow.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I'm not so sure.
Lots of stuff in our minds are multiplexed, and there's a word I can't think of right now for "inefficient medicine" such as drinking an energy drink for the energy because it's nice rather than taking a boring pill.
The Dopamine Cycle is all scrambled up in this, and it's not at all clear if we do those activities *to feel fear* or *get a dopamine burst*.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"It's a Post 9-11 World. We'll never have a carefree time again."
Personally, I find it exhausting.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Pain and the illusion of pain are the same, pain is a strangely psychologically influenced phenomenon. What you mean is that it gave the impression that your hand was burning while it actually wasn't... but the pain was very real!
Great quote, who is it attributed to?
Lack of pain receptors is a big problem for people who suffer from the condition. You can lean on a red-hot iron and not know your flesh is scalding until you smell roast meat.
This is somewhat analogous to lack of fear. You can find yourself in very dangerous situations and not care. This may have good consequences (overcoming adversity) and bad consequences (reckless behavior, getting yourself killed).
-kgj
In oriental medicine, the fight-flight-freeze response is governed by the "Triple Warmer" or "Triple Heater" meridian (pathway). Triple warmer's [TW] job is to keep a person alive, and whenever the fight-or-flight response gets activated, TW takes energy from all the body's other systems (except Heart), so that the body can fight better or run faster. TW directs the body to release a surge of adrenaline, concentrates blood at the reptilian brain around the brainstem (forebrain/higher thought processes aren't really needed in a fight), etc.
Some people get stuck in a continuous fight-or-flight response. Nothing in the body works as well as it should if TW's always hijacking other systems' resources. If the TW pathway is calmed down, the individual is better able to come to terms with the fear that overwhelms them, chronic health problems improve, etc.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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Great litany.
"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love."
1st John 4:18
Fear is natural and comes naturally (i.e. without effort) to the natural man. In contrast, the man who entrusts his life to God has no cause, need or circumstance of fear, as though anything could snatch him from God's hand. I am not yet this man, but I believe it to be true. I believe it to be true because of reason. I would expect no less than the complete absence of fear in the presence of and submission to an almighty being.
"How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer. Very digestible for sciency non-scientists.
Fear itself is not wrong, only what stupid people fear is wrong. I have fears in my life, and I'm glad I do. It keeps me alive, it even motivates me.
Absolutely. Fear guides our actions in many ways, and generally for the better. Applied properly, it can help us make quick decisions with sufficient accuracy in situations where there simply isn't time to apply rational analysis. The decisions aren't always as good as rational decisions would be, but they're generally not too far off, and often doing nothing is even worse than doing something that isn't quite right.
For example, I teach concealed weapon permit courses, and one of the major challenges faced by any rational, law-abiding person who decides to carry a deadly weapon is to learn how to decide under what circumstances they should use it. In the course I cover the ins and outs of the law, but there's no way anyone can apply that knowledge in the split second available during a possibly-deadly encounter. It's too complex and too abstract.
So in addition to the law, I teach people to train themselves to use their fear, to assume that if they draw and fire their gun they will go to prison for it, and so they should only use it in circumstances where they fear the consequences of not shooting even more than that. This "balance of opposing fears" is something that can be done on an emotional level -- with "the gut" --, and it can be done very quickly. Not to mention the fact that the standard of justification in the law is based on the presence of "reasonable fear", so if you're a reasonable person and you have a great fear, then you should be legally justified when the DA and/or jury gets around to weighing your actions against the minutiae of the law.
Of course, some people are more afraid of prison than of dying, so it might not be a good standard for them.
(Aside: This being slashdot, I know I'm going to get some responses saying that anyone who wants to carry a gun already has a broken "fear sense", but that's simply untrue. I have taught many, many people and the only ones I've met who decide to carry out of a sense of fear really DO have reason to fear -- mostly women with dangerous and unstable exes. Mostly, people who decide to carry do it more out of a sense of determination that they do not want to be a victim. Not that they think they're likely to be victims, but they see it as a reasonable precaution, much like having a fire extinguisher in their car and house.)
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How ironic then that the God of the Bible often rules through fear.
Good guess, some of it. But there's not much science and a good deal of mysticism in it, so it will be wrong more often than Western medicine, which isn't based on guessing as a rule.
I thought Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to anger, and anger leads to Suffering. or maybe they're right.
As someone who's struggled for decades with irrational and useless phobias, I really wish my fear had an off-switch. I would've gotten a lot more enjoyment out of life, and saved a lot in therapy bills and medications. It's an adaptation that kept our ancestors alive, but now it's mostly baggage.
I believe Eckhart Tolle said something very similar in response to a question in his book Power of Now.
Fear is good. Fear is healthy. Fear keeps you alive.
Which fear is that?
Your post, and the others here praising fear, are excellent examples of innumeracy: you treat the world as it existed in real binary categorical terms "fearful" and "fearless".
The real world is a bit more floating point than that.
I suffer from a deficit of physical fear, yet I am still manifestly alive.
I routinely judge things based on rational probabilities. I once walked out into a fairly busy highway to remove some debris that had forced me to swerve. I could see from basic kinematics I had plenty of time to get out there, get the thing (a large piece of somebody's bumper, as it turned out) and get back without significant risk. So I did so. The person I was with was beside herself with fear on my behalf.
Incidents like this eventually convinced me that I was physiologically defficient in this regard, and made me more aware of the importance of rational risk-estimation in my life. But I am now nearing my second half-century, and still not dead.
The interesting question to me is: would most people be better off with LESS fear in their lives, or MORE?
Today, I'd argue strongly for less, across the board, so that fear was just one of many mild emotional impulses that people could take into account when choosing actions, rather than an apparently unanswerable motivation to do all manner of stupid things.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If a seesaw...or any kind of saw was going to come crashing down on my hose.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
When people identify fear as a negative impulse, they are actually complaining about things that stupid people fear, which are usually artificial constructs, and are usually controlled by fearmongering demagogues spreading propaganda for political purposes.
I knew those spiders were up to no good!!!
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
Amygdala..Amidala? Crap, now I know why I was so scared of Lucas ruining the franchise and the fragile memories of my youth!
Do you have a specific example in mind?
At least I'm quite confident there's no cat in this box. Unless ... oh, wait!
http://www.feargod.net/verses.php
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Yes. The litany the GP posted, below, is not about denying fear, but rather about keeping control when the fear instinct would get you killed. Paul Atreides was being tested. He had to keep his hand in the box even though it felt like his hand was being burned/shredded/destroyed; if he removed his hand, he'd get stuck with the poisoned needle and die. He knew (or could figure out) that his hand was not actually being destroyed. The litany was to clear away the unnecessary fear of losing his hand, so that he could concentrate on dealing with the pain and keeping his hand in place.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
I like this analogy. It is a great analogy!
But do you know what would be better? If it were about cars.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Just put a slashdotter in front of a female homosapian and watch their fear and sweat response go into high gear as they babble of tech terms the female doesn't understand.
You can probably get by without fear in a nanny state ruled by the fearful masses, where everything has to be made perfectly safe, but try doing that in the jungles of your ancestors, where danger awaited around every corner...
This one?
If fear is the reason the house has switched from democratic to republican control, I for one welcome our new fear based society.....
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
it is the small death that brings total oblivion
Cybermen will remove fear
Oh, but somebody will die if I do that.
A person without fear would rapidly become dead, as there would be nothing preventing them from taking crazy risks.
Actually, a person with extremely attenuated fear tends to become psychopathic.
Apparently an occasional dose of fear/love/hate/excitement is rewarding. (Perhaps not having occasional scary/angry/loving/excited events indicates you're not taking enough risks with your life and as a result are probably missing opportunities.) Thus scary movies and TV shows, risky sports like racing, skydiving, mountain climbing, etc.
One observation about psychopaths is that they do not get excited without extreme stimulus, leading to the speculation that they are experiencing a phenomenon akin to sensory deprivation and part of their behavior (risk taking, harming others, seeking extraordinary rewards with no regard to side-effects, etc.) is an attempt to produce a strong enough stimulus to actually feel some activation of this path.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Good practitioners are able to get feedback from the body they're working on.
My high school friend's insurance company has spent well over $100,000 trying to figure out what's wrong with his kid, and they still don't have a diagnosis... All they have are guesses about what what went wrong 2 years ago - they presume it's a denovo genetic mutation, last I heard.
Furthermore, the new approach is "complementary care", where you take the best of all approaches and combine them. Oriental medicine is much more preventative than allopathic care.
Thanks for commenting.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Whatever. You can't calculate a probability of failure for everything, and if you want to call fear uncertainty, fine.
You're not as smart as you think, and I'm sure the few friends you have would agree. As much as you wish you were a calculator, you're still human, and probably afraid of being wrong.
When people identify fear as a negative impulse, they are actually complaining about things that stupid people fear
I think it's extremely unfair to describe people who have irrational fears as 'stupid people'. You're thinking of certain irrational fears; racism, xenophobia, etc. I have severe social anxiety disorder and don't consider myself 'stupid'; not as a whole, anyway. You don't have to be insulting.
== Jez ==
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What's in the box?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Good practitioners are able to get feedback from the body they're working on.
When they can do X-rays by ESP, that'll be something interesting.
As for allopathic, that term is a buzzword showing the speaker rejects science in favor of obvious fraud.