Fight or Flight - The Science of Fear

Picture the scene... lightning cracks in the storm-filled sky and a pipe organ sounds as a piercing scream fills the night air... Just kidding.

So yeah, this article is about fear, or more specifically, what makes something frightening. First of all I will tell you something about myself - I am a huge fan of horror. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing quite like a scary movie or book, which leads me to what got me thinking about this subject. A couple of months ago I went with some friends (and my future girlfriend) to see Andy Muschietti's horror masterpiece Mama. 

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the movie is about two sister foundlings who were... I guess the word is still 'adopted'... by a ghost who turns out to be a bit touchy about who gets visitation rights with her daughters. The movie didn't scare me too much, but I'm not trying to sound super manly or say the movie was bad - I was just distracted. The first time I saw the titular ghost it scared the bejesus out of me. After I recovered my manliness I started to wonder - why was she so scary? It's not like its something I've seen before and know to be dangerous or something I should be afraid of - it's not like she exists. I realise that on some websites this is where I would go on to rant about how Mama does, in fact, exist and aforementioned freaky-mother-ghost is the subject of a global conspiracy perpetrated by 'Them' or 'They'. Don't worry - thats my other blog... kidding. Or am I? *x-files music*

Mama... she's a lot scarier live.
(source)

So what is it that makes monsters like mama so frightening? As human beings one of the key survival mechanisms we have is that of fear. As everyone knows fear tells us what we need to stay away from to avoid a sticky, violent or otherwise hilarious death. I can only speak for myself when I say that I haven't encountered any creepy dried-out- looking manifestations of maternal jealousy floating about during my daily routine - so why is she so scary? and how does fear work anyway? Turns out it is a complicated issue, but it seems to boil down to innate fear of certain characteristics and a natural fear of the strange and unknown.

Our experiences of fear can be attributed to a part of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala are two small almond-shaped regions located deep within the brain tissue. The fear response is quite complex and involves several parts of the brain, but the amydala makes it happen by telling another part of the brain, the hypothalamus, to initiate the flight or fight response.

The High road and the Low Road: How Fear is Created

No, I'm not being philosophical: these are the two routes the fear response takes through the brain. I know I was raving about the amygdala before, but there are a few other brain bits that play a vital role in the fear response: the thalamus, the hippocampus and the hypothalamus - all part of the limbic system which is the part of the brain responsible for basic emotions.

The wiring responsible for basic emotions (source)

Picture the scene: you are woken in the night by the noise of a door opening in footsteps despite the fact that nobody is home. You grab your trusty baseball bat from beside your door and creep out into the hallway where you smash the shadowy figure of a potential intruder in the face, at which point you remember that your grandmother is staying for the night and she often gets up in the night to have a drink of water. Boy, your face is red... as is hers (sorry). 

In this case, your dear old grandmother's demise is due to the low road. The two processes take place at the same time, but one is faster than the other. The sound of the door opening and the footsteps is the stimulus which activates your brain to send the data to the thalamus. The thalamus takes the data and simply passes it on to the amygdala - it doesn't know whether the sound is actually going to result in you getting murdered or not, it just does the neurological equivalent of "Ask my supervisor.". The amygdala then tells the hypothalamus to tell you that you that you should probably take action to defend yourself (i.e. batter your granny to death) or run away - the flight or fight response. Unfortunately for her you chose to fight.

On the other hand, if you had waited for the impulse to finish taking the high road, your granny would still be happily alive. When you hear the unexpected sound your brain knows that it could have several meanings, so it sends the data to both the thalamus (low road) and the hippocampus (the high road - not a university for big grey water dwelling animals). The hippocampus has the ability to interpret the data and give it context. When the data reaches the hippocampus it compares the sound to things you have heard before and it looks for other information to clarify the situation. If the hippocampus had time, it could have told you that it was probably your grandmother moving about and you probably shouldn't kill her unless there is some kind of inheritance involved.

The high road and the low road explains why we sometimes get scared when we don't need to be. Our brain is just being safe in a 'shoot-first-ask-questions-later' sort of way, but why do we fear certain things? 

Innate and Conditioned Fear

This one seems more stupid than scary... (source)

Some things we are innately afraid of, which is why monsters which don't really exist are still frightening. Quite sensibly so, we are afraid of things that could pose a threat to us: things with claws and big teeth and things that poison, bite or carry disease. The best example of this is probably the fear of snakes. It is thought that most, if not all, human beings have a hard-wired fear of snakes - this has been demonstrated by people who have never seen a snake before who are still somehow afraid of them. Charles Darwin even noted that fear of a puff adder lunging at him from behind glass overrode any sensibility and logic and always induced fear. Observations of twins raised apart have suggested that the tendency towards fear and the severity of the response are genetic, while the object of the fear is down the environment.

Another way we can acquire fear is through conditioning. Unfortunately the best scientific evidence of this is a fine example of a scientist being a complete asshole. In the infamous 'Little Albert' experiment, American psychologist John B. Watson conditioned a baby to be afraid of rats. The poor baby, called Albert (go figure), was exposed to several animals including a rat, to none of which he showed any sign of fear. Douchebag Watson proceeded to frighten the child with a loud noise every time he was shown the rat, which led to him getting upset any time he saw the rat whether or not the noise was made. This type of fear is called conditioned fear and accounts for a lot of fear in our lives - like someone being afraid of dogs because they were bitten by one as a child, or a fear of roads because of a bad car accident. The amygdyla also plays an important role in memory and associates the bad memory with the feeling of fear.

So it turns out that we are afraid of scary movies because we have no say in the matter - its our brain automatically trying to save us from potential dangers and the reason most of us don't run screaming out of the cinema or attack the screen with a knife is because the hippocampus kicks in and reminds us that we are seeing a movie and it isn't real. Though it would be pretty hilarious if that did happen.

So why does fear feel good sometimes? That's a story for another day.

As with every article I post here, this one has been thoroughly researched and a list of sources can be provided for anyone who is curious – just check out the contact page.





  

Happy Accidents: 5 Discoveries made by Mistake

Anyone in the science trade will be pretty familiar with what are technically referred to as cock-ups. In fact pretty much anyone in any kind of endeavor will be familiar with the aforementioned ups. And though we like to think of inventors and discoverers as brilliant minds or genius eccentrics, it might surprise you how many great discoveries and inventions came about completely by accident. Some of them might not be so interesting but I've included them probably because their discovery was, well, awesome. Enjoy:

Lysozyme (Bear with me on this one)

Sir Alexander Fleming pulling a serious face.
(source:
 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Alexander_Fleming_3.jpg)

There are probably a few 'discoveries made by accident' lists on the interweb, but I bet none of them include lysozyme. This wonderful little protein (I’m biased – I worked with this stuff) was discovered by the famous Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming in 1921. Okay, not everyone will be familiar with this stuff and it might take some explaining so bear with me – lysozyme is an enzyme (a protein which performs and aids certain chemical reactions in cells – you can read more about them at how stuff works) which is an important part of the immune system. The human immune system is divided into two parts – innate and specific. While the specific part produced tailored, targeted responses to get rid of specific bugs and other nasties, the innate part is like the front line in a battlefield – it’s a broad spectrum, non-specific weapon against invading bugs. For example, the most important prat of the innate immune defense is the largest organ you have – your skin, as it stops bugs from getting into your blood. I really hope you actually have skin or that was pretty insensitive, sorry. But back to lysozyme:  it is found in three other important parts of the innate defence – tears, sweat and saliva, where it keeps the vulnerable parts of your body free of bacteria by tearing holes in them, causing them to burst open, or lyse – where the name comes from. Without lysozyme floating around in our various juices we would get a lot more infections and probably live much shorter lives.

This one had been a bit ramble-y, but now on to the interesting part – how Sir Fleming discovered it. The story goes that good old Alexander was suffering from a nasty could one day after returning to his lab after the end of world war one and he sneezed on some growing bacteria (one paper I read said a drop of mucus fell from his nose, but I figured sneezing was mercifully less detailed). Fleming noticed a few days later that the bacteria around the drop had been destroyed, leading him to the discovery of lysozyme. From a runny nose to a better understanding of the immune system – not bad, but most people know Sir Fleming for another accidental discovery…

Penicillin

Mold and bacteria fighting it out...
I don't think a funny caption can make this picture exciting.
(source: http://smccd.edu/accounts/case/graphics/staph.jpeg)

Yup, it’s the most famous accidental discovery – the antibiotic that changed the world, discovered by the runny-nosed Scotsman himself. In this case, the phrase ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ doesn't really hold true, and we should be pretty glad that Alexander Fleming didn't live by this motto. Fleming didn't really keep up with the obsessive cleanliness standards usually required in labs – his working spaces were often somewhat disorganised. One day while sorting through the mess, he saw a mold growing on one of his petri dishes which was supposed to have bacteria growing on it (talk to any microbiologist about this and they will roll their eyes – unwanted fuzziness is a common problem). Normally when a laboratory worker is greeted by such a sight they issue an imaginative stream of swear words and throw the plate away with an exasperated noise and stomp off to have a coffee – but not Sir Fleming. He looked at the plate and noticed that the bacteria didn't grow around the mold (pictured above) which turned out to be the mold Penicillium, which led to the discovery of… you guessed it – Penicillin. It has been estimated that this particular contaminated experiment has saved hundreds of millions of lives. Anyway, here's to Sir Alexander Fleming – the man who won a knighthood and a Nobel Prize by accident.

Coke

It only contained cocaine briefly
(source: http://www.imagemme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bigcoke.jpg)

Continuing on a pharmaceutical theme, it’s time to talk about coke. Not the powdery illegal kind (well actually… I’ll get to that later), but the fizzy kind that comes in bottles. My background in biology made the first two discoveries on my list come naturally, but I was genuinely surprised by this one when I was researching for this article. But yes, I did say a pharmaceutical theme – coke was originally devised as a headache cure and general health tonic by American civil war veteran and chemist John Pemberton. It’s not really fair to say it was invented by accident, but it certainly wasn't invented to be what it is today. Pemberton came up with many ‘drugs’ to try and make his fortune and he met with little success until he came up with a mixture of sugar, water, bubbles  and an unknown mixture of natural flavorings  Pemberton started by selling his concoction for a few cents a glass at his local pharmacy, but the drink’s popularity rose until it could be sold in bottles where it is now the most popular soft drink in the world. I shall finish this section with two interesting facts about Coca-Cola: it did contain cocaine to begin with (not any more unfortunately) and it is a highly effective spermicide (Yup. Some people actually looked into this).

Viagra - No pictures with this one.

I’m going to try my best to avoid making puns here, but it’s going to be hard. …Anyway… this one probably is the definition of a happy accident: Viagra was discovered in the 1980s by Simon Campbell and David Roberts, two working stiffs chemists working for a pharmaceutical company. They were working on a drug for blood pressure and the heart condition angina (there is probably a joke in there too, but I’m too mature to make it), but discovered it had a particular side effect (that must have been an awkward day at the lab). Hey-presto, Viagra is born. This just goes to show that in the pharmaceutical industry, there is always room for growth- even if there is stiff competition. …I’m sorry. I have put in place rigid rules about such puns since the time of this articles publication.

The Microwave Oven

The RadaRange - compact and versatile... like
 a taxidermied rhinoceros 
(source: http://www.marketingvp.com/images/radarange.jpg)

The eternal and faithful friend to students and single people everywhere – the microwave oven. What you may or may not know is that the microwave oven was another accidental discovery. In 1939, American engineer Percy Spencer began working in the production of magnetron tubes – powerful electrical components used in radar systems to produce microwaves. One day Spencer was standing in front of one of these almighty tubes and noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted (apparently safety in the workplace wasn't as big back then as it is now). Having an inquisitive mind, Mr. Spencer decided to investigate and tested out the phenomenon with some popcorn kernels, a portent of things to come, some might say. Another experiment quite literally blew up in his face… well, in his co-worker’s face: he placed an egg in a kettle and placed a magnetron on top of it where one of his colleagues had the misfortune to peek into the kettle out of curiosity just in time to have the egg explode on him.  From there Spencer went on to create the first commercial microwave oven – a monster of a thing called the RadaRange which stood nearly six feet tall and weighed close to 800 pounds which requires specialised plumbing for cooling. Luckily nowadays the microwave oven is an affordable thing which no home or depressing bachelor pad would be complete without. Hooray for Percy Spencer.

That concludes my list of five things discovered by accident. I hope it provided you with some enjoyable distraction. Stay tuned for more delicious sciency goodness every couple of days.

As with every article I post here, this one has been thoroughly researched and a list of sources can be provided for anyone who is curious – just check out the contact page.