Fearis a notoriously difficult emotion to overcome , but a team of research worker may have just manufacture the perfect shortcut to conquer fear without ever experience to front it . By manipulate the head activity of a group of participant , the scientists were able to first make and then erase aconditioned care answer , without their subjects even being aware of what was go on .
At present , the only sure - blast way of life to get over one’sphobias , anxiety , and trepidationsis to face them head - on . When successful , this approach can be an tickle pink experience , but it can also cause a huge amount of distress . However , using a technique called decode neurofeedback , the researcher managed to bypass all this unpleasantness by eliminating specific fears using the big businessman of neuroscience .
First , they inserted a condition fear reception into 17 volunteers by subjecting them to “ uncomfortable but tolerable electrical shocks ” whenever they saw a peculiar icon on a screen . Using operable magnetic reverberance imaging ( fMRI ) , the team mensurate player ’ brain activity as they learned to associate the visual stimulus with the fearfulness of being shocked .
In peculiar , they focused on brain regions such as theamygdalaand the ventral medial prefrontal cortex , both of which are heavily involved in encoding concern memory . Writing in the journalNature Human Behavior , the study authors give away how this approach enable them to identify the specific patterns of psyche bodily function that stand for to this newly conditioned fear . They then mark about sample to erase it by overwriting these neural patterns .
The corpus amygdaloideum play a central function in coordinating fear . CLIPAREA l Custom medium / Shutterstock
In astatement , study carbon monoxide gas - author Ben Seymour explained that “ we clear that even when the volunteers were simply perch , we could see abbreviated moment when the pattern of fluctuate brain natural action had partial features of the specific fear memory , even though the voluntary were n’t consciously aware of it . Because we could decode these nous pattern apace , we decided to give subjects a payoff – a small amount of money – every time we picked up these feature article of the memory . ”
The full process therefore took place subconsciously , as the neuronal patterns that once encoded veneration soon became associated with wages , while participants remained completely incognizant of what was going on inside their head .
“ In gist , the features of the computer storage that were previously tune to predict the sore electrical shock , were now being re - program to promise something overconfident rather , ” adds co - researcher Ai Koizumi .
The research worker then demonstrate their study the visual stimuli that had previously been associated with the galvanising shocks , and found that the care - relate patterns of brainpower natural action were no longer present .
“ This meant that we ’d been able to reduce the care memory without the volunteer ever consciously have the fear memory board in the process , ” concludes Koizumi .
