Being Afraid Is All In Your Mind

The neural basis of fear and anxiety

By Denise Prince Martin, published on September 1, 2001 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004


WHEN IT COMES TO EMOTIONAL LEARNING, the things you have heard may
be affecting you as much as those you have experienced, according to
Elizabeth A. Phelps, Ph.D., a New York University neuroscientist. Phelps
and her colleagues at Yale University found that patients who expected to
experience an electric shock suffered anxieties similar to those who had
learned through communication," says Phelps. "If someone tells you to be

During the study, published recently in Nature Neuroscience,
subjects were shown a random sequence of blue and yellow squares and told
that they might receive an electric shock when a blue square was shown.
The study used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the amygdala -- a
section of the brain that processes stimuli into fear -- and electrodes
hooked to the patient's fingers to monitor the responses to imagined
threats. By comparing her results to the MRIs of people who had fear
conditioned through experience, Phelps was able to show that a subject's
brain responded as if the threat were real.

"We are trying to understand the neural basis of fear and anxiety,"
says Phelps. "If we continue to study imagined fears then we can treat
things like panic anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder." According
to the National Institute of Mental Health, 19 million Americans suffer
from anxiety disorders such as panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive
disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias and generalized anxiety
disorder. With so many people trying to cope with these afflictions, the
potential benefit of this line of research is enormous. But until then,
don't believe everything you're told.