![]() These neurons trigger the adrenal gland to release hormones like adrenaline that travel through the blood to reach those organs and increase the rate at which they undergo the fear response. Sympathetic neurons are spread throughout the body and are especially dense in places like the heart, lungs and intestines. The sympathetic nervous system is the gas pedal that speeds up the systems involved in fight or flight. Your sympathetic nervous system is involved in regulating stress. That might contribute to a feeling of tightness in your chest and stomach in stressful conditions. These include muscles in the chest and stomach that help protect vital organs in those areas. The motor cortex of the brain sends rapid signals to your muscles to prepare them for quick and forceful movements. Several pathways prepare different body systems for intense physical action. But the body is where most of the action happens. Some of the fight-or-flight response – like heightened attention and threat detection – takes place in the brain. If your brain decides that a fear response is justified in a particular situation, it activates a cascade of neuronal and hormonal pathways to prepare you for immediate action. Many prejudices like racism are rooted in learning fear through tribalism. For example, you might feel neutral about a meeting with your boss but immediately feel nervous when a colleague tells you about rumors of layoffs. ![]() For example, you might be scared of a snake until you read a sign that the snake is nonpoisonous or the owner tells you it’s their friendly pet.Īlthough the prefrontal cortex is usually seen as the part of the brain that regulates emotions, it can also teach you fear based on your social environment. The prefrontal cortex, located above your eyes, is mostly involved in the cognitive and social aspects of fear processing. But the hippocampus steps in and blocks this response when you’re at the zoo because you aren’t in danger. For example, seeing an angry lion in the zoo and in the Sahara both trigger a fear response in the amygdala. It’s involved in memorizing what is safe and what is dangerous, especially in relation to the environment – it puts fear in context. The hippocampus is near and tightly connected to the amygdala. In response to a looming threat, mammals often fight, flee or freeze. For example, seeing an angry face on a computer screen can immediately trigger a detectable response from the amygdala without the viewer even being aware of this reaction. For this reason, the amygdala evolved to bypass brain areas involved in logical thinking and can directly engage physical responses. ![]() ![]() Early humans did not have much time to think when a lion was lunging toward them. Threat detection is a vital part of this process, and it has to be fast. When you see something, it determines whether you should eat it, attack it, run away from it or have sex with it. This small, almond-shaped area of the brain located near your ears detects salience, or the emotional relevance of a situation and how to react to it. When you perceive something as dangerous, whether it’s a gun pointed at you or a group of people looking unhappily at you, these sensory inputs are first relayed to the amygdala. There are a few key areas of the brain that are heavily involved in processing fear. Your brain, however, might not know the difference. Fifty-thousand years ago, being rejected by your tribe could mean death, but not doing a great job on a public speech at school or at work doesn’t have the same consequences. While your brain evolved to save you from a falling rock or speeding predator, the anxieties of modern life are often a lot more abstract.
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