When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Can you learn to play the piano without ever playing the piano?
As a young kid, my parents, like most other parents, secretly harboured hopes that their son was a musical genius. With high expectations, they sent me for piano class. Even as a kid, I could still remember the optimistic look on their faces: "when we come and pick him up after class, please let the teacher tell us he's a musical genius. Please!"
Well, I was a genius in another way. I held musical instruments in such high regard that after the first lesson, I skipped most subsequent classes, camping out at the A&W near the piano school, showing off my amazing abilities to eat copious amounts of curly fries, making all the other kids look like amateurs. I've since gone from strength to strength and am now a self-declared eating genius.
Ah, but if I only I had learnt more about neurobiology then, maybe things might have turned out slightly different.
So here's the question. Is it possible for someone to learn the piano without actually touching a piano.
And the amazing answer is, yes. (It gets whackier, stayed tuned).
A beautiful experiment by Harvard's Alvaro Pascual-Leone shows more:
1. First, Pascual-Leone and experimenters taught subjects new to musical instruments a one-handed, five-finger exercise on the piano. These subjects were placed in a transcranial magnetic simulation (TMS) - a brain scanner that maps the cortical regions in our brain which develop as we learn to play the piano (in particular, this five-finger exercise).
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2. Next, the experimenters randomly assigned new subjects into 3 groups:
- a physical practice group: these subjects physically practiced on a piano
- a mental practice group: these subjects mentally imagined playing the finger exercise on the piano (without touching an actual piano)
- a control group (these fellas basically did nothing)
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3. Those in the 2 practice groups had to practice (by themselves) the five-finger piano exercise for 5 days, 2 hours daily. All subjects had their brains scanned daily with the TMS to map out their motor cortex, and how it develops as they practiced.
The results?
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From the brain scans, just mental practice alone led to significant improvement in the performance of the five-finger exercise, though this improvement was less than that produced by physical practice. Moreover, mental practice alone led to the same plastic changes in the motor system as those occurring with the acquisition of the skill by repeated physical practice*.
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Pascual-Leone elaborates:
"We conclude that acquisition of the motor skills needed for the correct performance of a five-finger piano exercise is associated with modulation of the cortical motor outputs to the muscles involved in the task. Mental practice alone seems to be sufficient to promote the modulation of neural circuits involved in the early stages of motor skill learning. This modulation not only results in marked performance improvement but also seems to place the subjects at an advantage for further skill learning with minimal physical practice."
In other words, just mentally imagining playing the piano (without ever touching one) not only led to an improvement in observable piano-skills, but tangible changes in the brain, which develops neurally just as it would after physical practice.
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*Unsurprisingly, the length of practice affects how permanent the remapping in our brains. If the practice was only for those 5 days, the changes in our brains lasted for a shorter period of time. However, if subjects did the daily exercise for four long weeks, the remapping persisted for many days afterward. This expansion probably involved axonal sprouting and the formation of new connections.
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Read the full paper here:
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Numerous studies have confirmed the same finding - mental practice without actual practice rewires the brain. This study by Shackell and Standing of Bishop University examined three groups of 10 college athletes. The first group was put through two weeks of highly focused strength training for one specific muscle, three times a week. The second group listened to audio CDs that instructed them to imagine themselves going through the same workout as group 1, three times a week. The third group was a control group.
The results? The group that was physically exercising had a 28% increase in strength. The control group had no gains. The group that mentally imagined themselves training saw gains of 24 percent.
This study by Guang Yue et al looked at developing finger abduction strength. Volunteers who trained physically increased their finger strength by 53% after 12 weeks. The group doing mental practice? A respectable 35%.
It's important to note that mental imagery and practice is not just daydreaming or simple imagination. These changes in neuroplasticity and actual performance isn't just sitting there thinking about achieving something randomly. It is practicing - running through a set of actual training procedures, except it is done mentally.
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