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Striking back at fear

WASHINGTON: Science is getting a grip on people’s fears. Scientists say they now know better what is going on inside our brains when a spook jumps out and scares us. Knowing how fear rules the brain should lead to treatments for a major medical problem: when irrational fears go haywire.

“We’re making a lot of progress,” said Stephen Maren, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. “We’re taking all of what we learned from the basic studies of animals and bringing that into the clinical practices that help people. Things are starting to come together in a very important way.”

Millions of people suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A Harvard Medical School study estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy in 1999 at roughly $42 billion.

Fear is a basic primal emotion that is key to evolutionary survival. It is something that human beings share with animals. Genetics plays a big role in the development of overwhelming — and needless — fear, psychologists say. But so do traumatic events.

“Fear is a funny thing,” said Ted Abel, a researcher in the area of fear at the University of Pennsylvania. “One needs enough of it, but not too much of it.”

Armi Rowe, a freelance writer and mother from Connecticut, said she used to be “one of those rational types who are usually calm under pressure.”

She was someone who would ski down the treacherous black diamond trails of snowy mountains. Then one day, in the midst of coping with a couple of serious illnesses in her family, she felt fear closing in on her while driving alone. The crushing pain on her chest felt like a heart attack. She called an emergency number.

“I was literally frozen with fear,” she said. It was an anxiety attack, the first of many.

The first sign that she would get would be sweaty palms and then a numbness in the pit of the stomach and queasiness. Eventually it escalated — until she felt as if she was being attacked by a wild animal.

“There’s a trick to panic attack,” said David Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specialising in treating anxiety disorders. “You’re experiencing this powerful discomfort but you’re getting tricked into treating it like danger.”

These days, thanks to counselling, self-study, calming exercises and introspection, Ms. Rowe knows how to stop or at least minimise those attacks early on.

Scientists figure they can improve that fear-dampening process by learning how fear runs through the brain and body.

The fear hot-spot is the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the deep brain. The amygdala is not responsible for all of people’s fear response, but it is like the burglar alarm that connects to everything else, said Elizabeth Phelps, Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. — AP

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