How human brain processes fear revealed

A new study has recently provided researchers a deeper insight into how fear is processed in the human brain.

The research from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas would be the first to separate emotion from threat by controlling for the dimension of arousal, the emotional reaction provoked, whether positive or negative, in response to stimuli. Building on previous animal and human research, the study identified an electrophysiological marker for threat in the brain.

John Hart, Jr., M.D., said that they are trying to find where thought exists in the mind and they know that groups of neurons firing on and off create a frequency and pattern that tell other areas of the brain what to do, so by identifying these rhythms, they could correlate them with a cognitive unit such as fear.

Bambi DeLaRosa said that they have known for a long time that the brain prioritizes threatening information over other cognitive processes and the findings showed them how this happens.

she further explained that theta wave activity starts in the back of the brain, in its fear center, the amygdala, and then interacts with brain's memory center, the hippocampus, before traveling to the frontal lobe where thought processing areas are engaged and at the same time, beta wave activity indicates that the motor cortex would be revving up in case the feet need to move to avoid the perceived threat.

This study would serve as a foundation for future work that would explore normal versus abnormal fear associated with an object in other atypical populations including individuals with PTSD.

The study is published in Brain and Cognition.