ownedgirlie
Posts: 9184
Joined: 2/5/2006
Status: offline
|
I saw a story on Yahoo News this morning about how fear is linked to smell receptors in the brain, and when these receptors are shut off, our sense of fear goes with it. This of course got me thinking to the gazillions of comments I have read from folks, deciding that anyone who doesn’t fear harm or death must be one fucked up psycho case loon (I kind of paraphrased that). So I thought I’d do some Googling and see what I found, not just to help our arm chair shrinks with their future analysis, but mostly because I was keenly interested (I’m dorky like that) and wanted to know more.
Here’s the Reuters article that first caught my attention (in the interest of keeping this post shorter than 100 pages, I’m just posting the links):
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071108/sc_nm/mice_fear_dc&printer=1;_ylt=ArQ8t5uO3ml89bLIxo.AcsoiANEA
When I searched further, I saw tons of other news stories, basically reporting on the same thing.
The key words that came up, though, was “Brain Imaging.” I find this stuff fascinating, so I wanted to see what Brain Imaging was, and how it could teach us about our own psyches and our reactions to stuff. My searching led me to The University of Edinburgh, as they have a Brain Imaging Research Center. The site below has links to the various types of brain imaging, and if you’re anything like me (which would be scary in itself, unless of course you can’t smell), you’ll click on the links and learn the various ways in which this is done.
http://www.dcn.ed.ac.uk/bic/research/research.asp
Taking it a step further, how about brain imaging as it relates to neuropsychology?
http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/07-08/course.php?code=P01640
Below is a press release from NYU Office of Public Affairs, from March of this year, discussing the findings that fear is also learned through observation:
“Humans acquire fears using similar neural processes whether they’ve personally experienced an aversive event or only witnessed it, according to a study by researchers at New York University’s Departments of Psychology. This is the first study examining the brain basis of fears acquired indirectly, through the observation of others. The study shows that the amygdala, which is known to be critical to the acquisition and expression of fears from personal experience, is also involved during the acquisition and expression of fears obtained indirectly through social observation. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN).”
http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/1497
(I just love how all angles of this is being studied and observed)
Here’s a study (National Institute of Mental Health, 2005) that links a human’s ability to trust to hormone levels. This is amazing!
“A brain chemical recently found to boost trust appears to work by reducing activity and weakening connections in fear-processing circuitry, a brain imaging study at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has discovered. Scans of the hormone oxytocin's effect on human brain function reveal that it quells the brain's fear hub, the amygdala, and its brainstem relay stations in response to fearful stimuli.”
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2005/trust-building-hormone-short-circuits-fear-in-humans.shtml
Anyway, I could go on (benefits of OCD) but I’ll stop here. I just found this stuff fascinating. So the next time we see comments like, “You must be CRAZY to think that way” we can just reply, “Nah, I just don’t smell very well” 
Seriously though, this lends to the fact that we all have different boundaries, that some people may even have NO boundaries, and that others may have what seems like too many boundaries. Rather than stamping people with a Mental Illness label (or in my case, a wacky wafer waffle (long story)), we can know that our oh so complicated brains are made up with varying levels of hormones, transmitters, and wacky wafer genes. So either none of us is crazy, or we ALL are!
|
Fear Not! or, Are You Crazy?? - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread