Study Identifies Brain Circuit That Can Help Keep Fears at Bay People who get jittery at the idea of boarding a flight due to fear of flying or at the idea of going to the basement for the fear of spiders can heave a sigh of relief, as a treatment called exposure therapy can help them overcome their fears. In this therapy, people are repeatedly exposed to their objects of fear in a safe environment to help them get over their fearful response. So far, the problem with the exposure therapy was that its effects seldom lasted and people would invariably relapse with which most of their fears would also resurface. However, scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a therapy which would help people suffering from phobias and other complicated conditions, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They identified this new way to enhance and prolong the benefits of exposure therapy after their experiments on rats. Neural circuit and prolonging effects of exposure therapy While trying to enhance the benefits of the therapy, the researchers zeroed in on a neural circuit that became active during exposure therapy in the rats. The study, published in the eLife in September 2016, revealed that the benefits of the therapy could be stretched for at least two months by boosting the circuit's activity during the treatment. The research was conducted in the laboratory of Ki Goosens, assistant professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “When you give extinction training to humans or rats, and you wait long enough, you observe a phenomenon called spontaneous recovery, in which the fear that was originally learned comes back,” Goosens said. “It’s one of the barriers to this type of therapy. You spend all this time going through it, but then it's not a permanent fix for your problem,” she added. According to the researchers, the neural circuit identified by them connects a part of the brain involved in fear memory, called the basolateral amygdala (BLA), with another region called the nucleus accumbens (NAc), which helps the brain process rewarding events. They have termed it as the BLA-NAc circuit.
“The amygdala is a part of the brain that is tightly linked with fear memory but it's also been linked to positive reward learning as well, and the accumbens is a key reward area in the brain,� she said. To ascertain the involvement of a specific brain circuit, the researchers first trained the rats to fear a certain noise by pairing it with a foot shock. Later, they trained them on exposure therapy during which the noise was presented in the absence of the foot shock. The researchers then looked at markers of neural activity in the brain. It revealed that the BLA-NAc reward circuit was recruited by the brain during exposure therapy, as the rats gave up their fear of the bad noise. The researchers looked at ways to boost its activity through a training called counterconditioning that associates fear-eliciting cues with rewarding events or memories. Recovery from anxiety is possible Fear and anxiety disorders are more common than people assume. As per the National Institute of Mental Health, 18 percent U.S. adults are diagnosed with a fear or anxiety disorder each year. However, anxiety disorder is a treatable condition. For a person grappling with anxiety disorder, it is difficult to accomplish even the mundane daily chores. But seeking treatment can bring lasting recovery and reintegrate the patient back into the mainstream. If a loved one is suffering from anxiety disorder, contact the Florida Helpline for Anxiety. Call at our 24/7 helpline number 855-920-9834 for a quick turnaround. Our experts can guide you to one of the best anxiety treatment centers in Florida.
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