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The Psychophysiology Of Fear

Natural Selection

My Brain Makes Me Nervous

by David Ewing Duncan   Sep 10 2008   See Archive
M.R.I. scans reveal our fear of bosses and rivals, of saying something stupid, of taking chances—oh, and of lions, tigers, and bears.

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Until recently, the neural mechanisms of anxiety weren't well understood; nor was it clear how our brains cope with trying to mitigate its affects. That is, how we learn to use our remarkably adaptive brains to respond in a manner more appropriate to the 21st century.

Inserting people's brains into an f.M.R.I.—which reads blood flows in our gray matter that indicate activity in certain neural regions—has offered some intriguing clues.

My head was recently scanned by clinical psychologist Philippe Goldin, a researcher in the lab of James Gross, director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. Goldin and his team are studying 30 "healthy controls" and about 60 social phobics in an effort to plot the pathways of anxiety—and, more important, how people are able to damp down their impulses to fight or flee.

On the monitor, the story of my mortification is interrupted by a single line of words in bold:

I AM A LOSER


I read more of my story, then this line pops up:

I'M TOO INSECURE TO
STAND UP FOR MYSELF


Two primary regions of the brain show increased blood flow in the scanner—to use the vernacular, they "light up"—in response to an anxious or frightening situation. One is the amygdala, which is associated with emotions; the other is the hypothalamus, which gets you ready to take action by increasing your heart rate, respiration, and sweating.

With my amygdala and hypothalamus blazing, Goldin and his colleague Kelly Werner introduced the second part of the experiment: They asked me to try to modulate my anxiety, to use coping mechanisms to settle myself down, if I can.

I'm supposed to be a "healthy control" for this experiment, but I'm fully aware that up to 10 percent of supposedly healthy volunteers in f.M.R.I. studies turn out to have behavioral problems that show up on the scans.

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