fear is a feeling of great evolutionary importance. Thanks to fear, our brain is capable of being ‘alert’ to survive present threats and to avoid future threats. Feel fear, anguish or even anxiety it therefore has its advantages for our survival. But then why is fear sometimes is ’embedded’ in our brainor does it make it hard for us to think clearly? And why are there people who cannot get rid of these terrifying feelings? According to new research published in the scientific journal ‘Molecular Psychiatry’, this phenomenon would have a biological explanation.
To understand why fear gets stuck in our brain, let’s start by talking about how our gray matter works. When we are faced with a threatening situation, both amygdala as the prefrontal cortexas well as a network of neurons that connects both areas of the brain, become alert and trigger the emotional response that we know as fear.
The goal of fearas explained by the popular science magazine ‘Smithsonian magazine’, is to launch a series of physiological mechanisms that could be useful to us in a dangerous situation. While the brain goes into a ‘hyperalert’ statethe heart rate increases, the pupils dilate and the bronchi widen in case you need to run away. All these processes depend on the order that is sent from our gray matter. So the higher the alert signal, the more intensely all the bodily mechanisms are activated.
Fewer enzymes, more fear
One of the brain mechanisms involved in the ‘formation’ of fear is the enzyme PRDM2. Several studies, in fact, suggest that brains that produce low levels of this protein develop more exaggerated stress responses. According to the study published in ‘Molecular Psychiatry’, this factor not only affects how fear is experienced in the moment, but also enhances this feeling when it comes to “consolidate” the memory of what lived
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The study, according to the researcher Estelle Barbier, points to two main conclusions. On the one hand, it is shown that the greater the activity between the amygdala and the frontal lobes the greater the fear response. On the other hand, it was also observed that the lower the production of PRDM2 the more fear memories become ’embedded’ in the brain. The investigation also found a number of genes that are also affected in this process, which in turn seemed to increase the neural network that forges the feeling of fear.
An interesting detail that the study picks up is the following: the same physiological mechanisms that intervene in the ‘formation’ of fear also occur in brains of people with alcohol addiction. Several studies suggest that dependent individuals develop low levels of the enzyme PRDM2. In this sense, as explained by the researchers who have led this work, this phenomenon would explain why people with alcohol addiction often have a increased tendency to develop pathological fears.