The dynamics of fear on the brain

Thalamus

Sensory Cortex

Hippocampus

Amygdala

Hypothalamus

Fear conditioning

low-road)

Methods for controlling and managing fear

Negative visualization

Writing/talking about our fears

Gradual exposure

Transforming anxiety into excitement

Differences between fear and phobia

Disclaimer

How the human brain works is still not fully understood, the information presented here is the sum of an intensive research on the National Center of Biotechnology and Information(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/)

, Wikipedia and others various websites and sources of information. These are generally accepted theories of neuroscience, and they might be subject to change with further studies on the human brain and the advancement of technology.

We all have, probably, felt fear during our existence, it is a feeling listed, by Paul Ekman, as one of the basic human emotions and we should acknowledge it as an important part of our condition as human beings.Fear is thought to have developed as a survival mechanism that is supposed to stop us from making really bad decisions, decisions that would probably kill us if we didn't have the right judgment. We feel fear when we perceive possible danger or a threat. Of course, the usefulness of fear was much more clear before we developed into the dominant species of this planet. Nowadays, we still feel fear which is, sometimes, helpful, the feeling of fear that it is not helpful we refer to as anxiety. Most of the times it just gets in our way. We start to sweat, our heart starts to race, we get stiff and we get stuck inside our head with all the possible negative outcomes moments before we have an interview for a new job, when we approach someone who we find attractive or when we have to make that important speech in front of an audience.We become anxious when we feel things are out of our control and we start to think about what might happen. As Seneca, a stoic philosopher from ancient Rome, wrote in one of his works, "We are more frightened than hurt, and suffer more in imagination than in reality"If we are to improve ourselves we must develop the awareness that our mind, sometimes, creates impediments that don't really exist and confront them so we can move forward and achieve whatever we want to accomplish.The areas of the brain who are responsible for dealing with threatful stimuli and triggering fear responses are:- Guides incoming sensory data coming from the receptors we have throughout our body.- Interprets the data coming from the thalamus.- Has a major role in transforming short-term memories into long-term memories and processes the stimuli in order to establish context.- Decodes the emotions and determines if the stimuli is a threat. Also, plays a role in storing fear memories.- Triggers the reaction according to the judgment of the amygdala. It triggers the fight or flight response in case of a perceived threat.There are 2 paths that stimuli take in our brain when we receive stimuli of a probable threat, both start at the same time, although one reach the ender faster than the other. That is why when we hear a sound coming from your kitchen at night our brain triggers fear physiological reactions, we freeze and our senses sharpen, ready for a fight or flight response until we have a confirmation of what the sound really was.They are known as the high and low roads of fear.Theis an unconscious process that is supposed to set you up to react quickly in case there is a real danger. It triggers physiological responses getting us into a state of anxiety.Theis a more conscious process in which our brain tries to set the context to understand if there is a real threat.When you receive the stimuli our brain starts both processes but we only actually feel fear when there is a confirmation of danger by the hippocampus to the amygdala, during the time your brain is processing the high road we are only in a state of anxiety.By being aware of this process, when we get anxious, we can make the high-road a fully conscious process, in which we evaluate the cause of that feeling of anxiety and act accordingly to the situation, instead of a giving into the fight or flight response. The low-road still continues as an unconscious process, meaning we will still get the physiological responses.Fear conditioning is a paradigm of behavior in which an organism associates neutral stimuli with aversive stimuli.Most of the times we are conditioned during our childhood, we might, unconsciously, associate certain situations with negative stimuli and generalize the outcomes. Then fear develops through our lives into adulthood as an irrational fear, sometimes becoming a phobia. An example of this would be a child being bitten by a dog or just seeing and hearing a dog bark really loud can traumatize the child and in adulthood, the individual can become anxious just by seeing a dog.The amygdala is thought to store danger cues and thus have a major role in fear conditioning. As thereceives a stimulus from theit decodes it and associates it with related stimuli then it sends a signal to thein order for it to start the physiological responses necessary to react to the stimuli. If the stimuli as a negative connotation linked to it, the hypothalamus triggers the physiological responses known to cause fear and anxiety.There are cases in which people who had their amygdala damaged have little to no response to fear, the most known case is referred to the patient SM-046 or the "woman with no fear."To be able to overcome our fears we must start by acknowledging them for what they are, a feeling created by your brain to keep us away from certain things or situations. If we feel the fear is irrational, unjustifiable and we want to overcome it, we can employ the following techniques:Imagining the worst it can happen can make you acknowledge how much of our fear is irrational. It works somewhat like gradual exposure. Although it is less effective.The labeling of emotions has been known to have benefits in the management of negative emotions. By writing our emotions we activate a the Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex which is an area of the brain thought to have a role in motor inhibition, meaning it as a role in overriding pre-existing processes acting on the brain. Thus writing about how we feel about what we fear may help us understand why we fear and through comprehension we can see our irrationalities and confront them.- It consists of repeatedly creating situations in which fear is triggered in a lesser frightening way. By gradually decreasing our control over the situation as our levels of anxiety drop when confronted with the stimuli associated with fear we can accustom to it making the memory of the negative stimuli obsolete.It is a process that takes time, as our brains need to develop new associations and forget the old ones.- Fear and excitement have a very similar physiological effect and trigger, roughly, the same areas of the brain, the difference is that excitement also triggers the nucleus accumbens, which is part of our reward center in our brains, that is why horror movies are enjoyable and haunted houses are viable, they trigger the emotion of fear in our brains until we realise there is no real danger making our brains confuse fear and excitement. As we get excited or afraid, our Hypothalamus sends signals throughout our body to get ready for something important to happen, our heart rate increases, our muscles stiffen and we might start to sweat.It is just a matter of framing. Whatever our fears might be we can become anxious when facing them or excited by facing them.Fear is a normal emotion to experience, it is supposed to help us in avoiding danger while a phobia is classified as an anxiety disorder, typically is an irrational fear of an object or situation that cause impairment and avoidance.Phobias can be acquired through fear conditioning, vicariously and, possibly, even through genetics.The way to treat phobias is through, but if it is too overwhelming it's recommended to get professional help.