A team of scientists from the Sainsbury Welfare Center (SWC) made an analysis of how the brain learns to suppress instinctive fear of threats that are repeated throughout life. The study has the potential to contribute significantly in anxiety therapies and phobias that prevent the development of a person.
Instinctive fears are the deepest and usually difficult to handle. The alert signal arises deeply from the brain in response to imminent danger. When activated, the body acts automatically to ensure its survival. For example, the fear of heights is found in almost all human beings and is responsible for forcing us to get away from the cliffs or any other site that increases the probabilities of a fatal fall.
These automatic reactions to dangerous situations can decrease if an organism constantly faces the same stimulus. If they survive the alleged risk scenario, animals lose their fear. Following the same example, a paratrooper will eventually stop fearing to the heights. The neuroscientists are amazed with the mechanism. Although they have replicated it with behavioral experiments, there is no certainty about the chemical and electrical phenomenon inside the brain that induces it.
How to learn to overcome fear
A light has just emerged on the dark route to understand the act of overcoming fear. SWC researchers analyzed the brain of scared mice who managed to overcome those chemical triggers. Through an experiment, they confirmed the area of the central organ where “the courage” occurs and identified the key components that encouraged their learning.
The brain area called ventrolateral geniculate (VGLN) suppressed fear reactions when they appeared in rodents. In addition, they discovered that the region was enriched with the information it received from the visual areas of the cerebral cortex. The view contributes to the understanding of the absence of risk and the VGLN stores these memories learned to inhibit fear in similar future situations. In other words, scientists could see how the brain learns that a stimulus that seems imminently dangerous does not represent a risk.
“Our results challenge traditional views on learning and memory. Although the cerebral cortex has long been considered the main center of the brain for learning, memory and behavioral flexibility, we discovered that subcortical VLGN, and Not the visual cortex, actually stores these crucial memories. He mentioned Sonja Hoferco -author of the study published in Science.
Patients with posttraumatic stress syndrome have chemical and electrical responses of an extreme risk situation when they find “triggers” in everyday life. Therefore, a person who suffered a car accident can be paralyzed when climbing a vehicle. Understanding in depth this intrinsic mechanism of the brain could help in the treatments of people with uncontrollable phobias. The reinforcement of the VGLN and the visual areas of the brain can be a way towards a more hopeful treatment, according to study experts.
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