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
The brain of brains - The Pre-frontal cortex
We've all heard of these phrases - "think with your mind and not your heart", "let's put our brains together", "let's think deeply about this".
Well, we now know that the brain has many different parts that perform many different functions. But one part, in particular, fits the stereotypical description of "brain" - the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC).
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Let's first start with some unique features of the PFC. We'll then move on to the different functions which the PFC performs.
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The PFC is the most recently evolved part of our brains. Reptiles, for example, have no PFC. All mammals have at least a little bit, while more advanced mammals like primates, dolphins, elephants, whales spot bigger and more developed PFCs. The human PFC is the most complexly wired of all.
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Interestingly, the PFC is the part of your brain that is the latest to mature. Our PFC doesn't fully come online until we are 25. By definition, this also means that the PFC is the least shaped by genes and the most influenced by experience. There is a very good reason for this: your brain needs a longer runway to learn about social context - what is appropriate in different situations? Why is it ok to pay a stranger to cook you a meal, but not ok to pay your mother-in-law to cook the same meal? This is difficult and requires us to experience ourselves before we learn. This also strong hints at why teenage behaviour tends to be very different. More on this later.
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Finally, the PFC carries a very special type of neuron. Neurons are the basic unit in your brain through which every thought, sensation, feeling, action happens. Amazingly, most neurons in our brains are very similar to the neurons in a fly's brain. Bar one exception - there is a rare and distinctive version of neuron in your frontal cortex called the Von Economo neuron - found only in a small handful of animals. The Von Economo neuron occurs only in 2 parts of our frontal cortex - the insular cortex (which regulates gustatory and moral disgust - which is why you feel like vomiting whether you eat something disgusting or watch a moral disgusting scene) and the anterior cingulate cortex (this relates to empathy).
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This entire paragraph sounds like a turn-off with all the scientific jargon - but it was a pretty big deal for us to find out about the Von Economo neuron. Besides all the new terms, the main thing to note is that the Von Economo neuron is rare in the entire natural world. The Von Economo is involved in very complex social decisions, and only a small handful of very socially complex animals have it.
Functions of the PFC
Before we get to the first function, this popular comic is completely inaccurate. Can you name why? You should be able to.
Ok back to the functions:
1) It helps us make decisions
Should you eat chicken or fish? Watch Movie A or Movie B? Do you say something or not say something? Your PFC decides all of this. It acts as the final decider between emotions and cognition - I feel this way, but I think that way, what should I do? You turn to the PFC as the final decision-maker.
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2) It considers relevant information
Say you are travelling to a country. Your frontal cortex starts to consider all the different things you might need and draws these out from previously stored memories. For example, it might consider that the electrical plug might be different; that you need to change currency; that the weather might be the opposite of where you are now, and you need to pack appropriately. Of course, the more experience you have garnered in an area, the wider the range of relevant information your PFC can draw up.
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3) It helps us to focus on a task
Say you are on the pavement looking to cross the road. Your PFC focuses on traffic in front of you - is it safe for you to get across, and what is the optimal path to take (is it worth walking to the traffic light 50m down the road?)
Now say you are on the pavement waiting for the bus. Your PFC focuses on identifying buses - a completely different shape and size from most other vehicles. Not only that, your eyes automatically look out for the bus number (whereas you might have simply not bothered if you were just crossing the road).
Being able to focus has obvious benefits, but also drawbacks in specific scenarios. You might be interested in these chapters:
- Heuristics: how and why we filter out information
- Creativity: how can we be more creative?
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4) Categorisation
What would you like to eat Chances are that in your head you categorised your food: "I had th
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But your brain is even more spectacular than that. Researchers from MIT trained a group of monkeys to differentiate between pictures of dogs and cats. Brain scans show that with learning, individual PFC neurons developed where some responded to dogs, while others responded to cats. Even though there are many types of dogs and cats, the monkeys were able to differentiate between the 2.
Now, try something warped. Combine pictures of dogs and cats to create a hybrid - say of 80% dog and 20% cat or 60% dog and 40% cat. The neurons in the PFC that recognise "dogs" respond to this hybrid. But what if the ratio was the other way around - 40% dog and 60% cat? Then the neurons in the PFC that recognise "cats" kick in. Our brains are really good at recognising patterns and categorising information.
There is however a cost to this. We become so attuned that The PFC groups apples and peaches as closer to each other in a conceptual map than are apples and toilet plungers. In a relevant study, monkeys were trained to differentiate between pictures of a dog and of a cat. The PFC contained individual neurons that responded to “dog” and others that responded to “cat.” Now the scientists morphed the pictures together, creating hybrids with varying percentages of dog and cat. “Dog” PFC neurons responded about as much to hybrids that were 80 percent dog and 20 percent cat, or 60:40, as to 100 percent dog. But not to 40:60—“cat” neurons would kick in there.