Why do some people love feeling fear?
Why do some people love feeling fear?
The chemistry of fear.
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Transcript
NARRATOR: It's the season or horror films and haunted houses, that time of year when many of us get a taste for being scared senseless. Getting that jolt of adrenaline can be thrilling, and tons of fun for some, but what attracts us to the sensation of fear? And more importantly, what is fear exactly?
ABIGAIL MARSH: So fear is the expectation or the anticipation of possible harm. When you learn to fear something, you are learning to fear something that triggers the actual threat or that signals that the actual threat is impending. The body is highly sensitive to the possibility of threat, and so there's multiple pathways that bring that fear information into your brain.
So let's say that you're alone in your house at night. It's dark, and you hear a crash. The nerves in your ears that transduce that sound is the first part of the nervous system in action. That signal is relayed to the thalamus, which is the sort of relay station in the middle of your brain, and then directly to the amygdala via the sort of rough-and-ready route.
NARRATOR: The amygdala is such a critical component of the fear response because it releases several key neurotransmitters in the body. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that nerve cells in the brain known as neurons use to communicate with each other in the nervous system. The most important neurotransmitter in the fear response is called glutamate.
MARSH: And the actions of glutamate in the amygdala in response to the fearful thing that you've heard set off this cascade of other responses. The information is relayed both to a region called periaqueductal gray, which is deep in the recesses of the very ancient brain. And that's the region that is responsible for two like classic fear behaviors, one of which is freezing and the other one of which is jumping.
So because it's such an ancient part of the brain, these are actually quite difficult responses to control. The information is also related to a region called the hypothalamus. And that is the region that controls the autonomic nervous system, part of which is what people know as the fight-or-flight branch of the sympathetic nervous system. And that controls all these other body responses that we think of as related to fear like heart rate going up, blood pressure going up, et cetera.
What happens when the hypothalamus sends the signal down into the body that something scary has happened via the autonomic nerves, it goes to the adrenal glands. And they pump out both cortisol and adrenaline.
NARRATOR: The fear response is key to our survival. Without it, imminent danger might go unnoticed, failing to launch the fight-or-flight response that could save us from harm. The fear response leads to release of adrenaline, which gives our body an extra jolt of energy and an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. It also releases glucose into the bloodstream, giving you an extra boost in case you need to get the heck out of there. Next, cortisol keeps the sympathetic nervous system up and running. This system is responsible for the fight-or-flight response, sustaining that heightened sense of energy and alertness received from the adrenaline rush.
MARSH: The stages of the fear response that are mediated by these structures are-- at low levels, the initial response to hearing something scary is usually vigilance and freezing. And there's an evolutionary reason for this, which is that movement will often release predatory attacks in predators. If your nervous system figures out that something really bad is actually happening and you need to get out of there, it ramps up the fear response and you move into flight, so getting out there. The final response that you might see in a frightened animal or person if the threat is so close you can no longer flee, it's fighting.
If more detailed processing by the brain determines that what has happened isn't actually that scary, it downregulates the amygdala response and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is kind of the sort of opposite side of the autonomic nervous system, helps to bring your body back to resting state.
NARRATOR: So the next time you're scaring yourself silly this Halloween, be thankful for the downregulation of the amygdala response. Watching a horror movie would be way more stressful without it.
ABIGAIL MARSH: So fear is the expectation or the anticipation of possible harm. When you learn to fear something, you are learning to fear something that triggers the actual threat or that signals that the actual threat is impending. The body is highly sensitive to the possibility of threat, and so there's multiple pathways that bring that fear information into your brain.
So let's say that you're alone in your house at night. It's dark, and you hear a crash. The nerves in your ears that transduce that sound is the first part of the nervous system in action. That signal is relayed to the thalamus, which is the sort of relay station in the middle of your brain, and then directly to the amygdala via the sort of rough-and-ready route.
NARRATOR: The amygdala is such a critical component of the fear response because it releases several key neurotransmitters in the body. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that nerve cells in the brain known as neurons use to communicate with each other in the nervous system. The most important neurotransmitter in the fear response is called glutamate.
MARSH: And the actions of glutamate in the amygdala in response to the fearful thing that you've heard set off this cascade of other responses. The information is relayed both to a region called periaqueductal gray, which is deep in the recesses of the very ancient brain. And that's the region that is responsible for two like classic fear behaviors, one of which is freezing and the other one of which is jumping.
So because it's such an ancient part of the brain, these are actually quite difficult responses to control. The information is also related to a region called the hypothalamus. And that is the region that controls the autonomic nervous system, part of which is what people know as the fight-or-flight branch of the sympathetic nervous system. And that controls all these other body responses that we think of as related to fear like heart rate going up, blood pressure going up, et cetera.
What happens when the hypothalamus sends the signal down into the body that something scary has happened via the autonomic nerves, it goes to the adrenal glands. And they pump out both cortisol and adrenaline.
NARRATOR: The fear response is key to our survival. Without it, imminent danger might go unnoticed, failing to launch the fight-or-flight response that could save us from harm. The fear response leads to release of adrenaline, which gives our body an extra jolt of energy and an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. It also releases glucose into the bloodstream, giving you an extra boost in case you need to get the heck out of there. Next, cortisol keeps the sympathetic nervous system up and running. This system is responsible for the fight-or-flight response, sustaining that heightened sense of energy and alertness received from the adrenaline rush.
MARSH: The stages of the fear response that are mediated by these structures are-- at low levels, the initial response to hearing something scary is usually vigilance and freezing. And there's an evolutionary reason for this, which is that movement will often release predatory attacks in predators. If your nervous system figures out that something really bad is actually happening and you need to get out of there, it ramps up the fear response and you move into flight, so getting out there. The final response that you might see in a frightened animal or person if the threat is so close you can no longer flee, it's fighting.
If more detailed processing by the brain determines that what has happened isn't actually that scary, it downregulates the amygdala response and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is kind of the sort of opposite side of the autonomic nervous system, helps to bring your body back to resting state.
NARRATOR: So the next time you're scaring yourself silly this Halloween, be thankful for the downregulation of the amygdala response. Watching a horror movie would be way more stressful without it.