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The fear response starts in a region of the brain called the amygdala. This almond-shaped set of nuclei in the temporal lobe of the brain is dedicated to detecting the emotional salience of the stimuli – how much something stands out to us.Oct 27, 2017
The brain amygdala appears key in modulating fear and anxiety. Patients with anxiety disorders often show heightened amygdala response to anxiety cues. The amygdala and other limbic system structures are connected to prefrontal cortex regions.
Studies have also found that the amygdala modulates the fear response in humans. … Together, these findings indicate that the amygdala plays an extensive role in regulating the fear response in humans as well as animals.
Even so, our brains are hardwired for fear — it helps us identify and avoid threats to our safety. The key node in our fear wiring is the amygdala, a paired, almond-shaped structure deep within the brain involved in emotion and memory.
The amygdala is a key player in the processing of fear. This brain area is prominently modulated by the neurotransmitter serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT).
The cerebellum is busy planning, adjusting and executing movements of the body, the limbs and the eyes. It plays a major role in several forms of motor learning. The evidence for a role for the cerebellum in cognitive functions is rather weak.
Each amygdala is located close to the hippocampus, in the frontal portion of the temporal lobe. Your amygdalae are essential to your ability to feel certain emotions and to perceive them in other people. This includes fear and the many changes that it causes in the body.
As soon as you recognize fear, your amygdala (small organ in the middle of your brain) goes to work. It alerts your nervous system, which sets your body’s fear response into motion. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released. Your blood pressure and heart rate increase.
“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.” … Fears that have crept up inside our inner beings and have become a stronghold.
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” “Do not fear the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Do not fear him, declares the LORD, for I am with you, to save you and to deliver you from his hand.”
The amygdala is conserved in function across most vertebrate species, and through interactions with cortical and hippocampal regions, it regulates downstream hardwired projections, leading to the innate ‘fear reflex’.
The amygdala responds like an alarm bell to the body. It alerts the hypothalamus, which sends a message to the adrenal glands to give you an instant burst of adrenaline, the “action” hormone. Adrenaline causes your heart to race and pump more blood to your muscles.
But serotonin is not always a bed of roses. In the early days of treatment, it can increase levels of fear and anxiety and even suicidal thinking in some younger people.
Scientists measure things like skeletomotor actions (such as freezing) and the visceromotor actions that support those skeletomotor actions (such as changes in heart rate), which they might refer to as ‘fear’; correspondingly, they measure the change in neural firing that supports those actions, which they might refer …
Most fear is learned. Spiders, snakes, the dark – these are called natural fears, developed at a young age, influenced by our environment and culture. … While the fear itself is learned, though, humans seem to be predisposed to fear certain things like spiders and snakes because of evolution.
Hippocampus is a complex brain structure embedded deep into temporal lobe. It has a major role in learning and memory. It is a plastic and vulnerable structure that gets damaged by a variety of stimuli. Studies have shown that it also gets affected in a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders.
I call it visceral fear of harm. It’s a feeling in your muscles and in your gut that you will be physically injured. … This visceral feeling comes over you more abruptly and with greater intensity than mere anxiety about having a bad evening or even a dread of possible distress, depression, or other worries.
Facing their fear of identity loss (ego-death), the shame of troubling others (loss of autonomy), fear of losing loved ones or loved ones losing them (separation), and the fear of death itself (extinction), their journeys tap into and explore humanity’s primal fears.
φρούριο {n} stronghold (also: citadel, fortress, fort)
A stronghold is a defensive structure: Psalms 9:9 The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. misgav; properly, a cliff (or other lofty or inaccessible place); figuratively, a refuge:–defense, high fort (tower), refuge.
Phobia facts
The three types of phobias are social phobia (fear of public speaking, meeting new people or other social situations), agoraphobia (fear of being outside), and specific phobias (fear of other items or situations).
The root of all sin is fear: the very deep fear that we are nothing; the compulsion, therefore, to make something of ourselves, to construct a self-flattering image of ourselves we can worship, to believe in ourselves – our fantasy selves.
Hidden or unexpressed feelings become frozen into the structure of your body. That means a lot of negative emotions become stored along your spine and in the backs of your legs. Most of your powerful emotions such as anger and fear are stored in your back.
Fear kicks your fight-or-flight response into overdrive, Evans says. Your adrenal glands secrete adrenaline. Blood flow decreases to your brain’s frontal lobe, which is responsible for logical thinking and planning, and the deeper, more animalistic parts of your brain—including the amygdala—take over.