MIT finds a neural circuit that restricts fear phobia

Some of us suffer from symptoms of fear of something, such as fear of holes, fear of many feathers, lots of legs, fear of flying aircraft, etc. and medicine has also developed therapies to limit processing or eliminating such fears and of course when treated, we all want long-term treatment effects. In this respect, a team from MIT discovered a neural circuit in mice . Once stimulated, it is possible to maintain the effects of therapies for fear syndrome. The results of the study may open up a more effective therapy for patients with depression due to phobias and may even support treatment for complex disorders, such as tangles. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

According to the American Association of Disorders and Anxiety Research (ADAA), about 18% of adults living in the US are diagnosed with some form of phobia or depression. Of these 19 million people possess very specific fears. The first therapy for treating these fears is called exposure therapy or exposure.

During a session of therapy mentioned above, a patient will be exposed to a source of fear stimulation in a safe environment. For example, if you are afraid of flying, you will be shown a series of photos about the plane. This technique keeps repeating until your reaction to fear subsides, at which point the brain has learned that there is nothing terrible, air travel is painless.

There is a nerve circuit that exists in the linked parts of the brain responsible for fear.

However, this therapy is usually only effective for a short time, the fear will return through spontaneous recovery symptoms. Advanced medicine has helped us understand that the human brain will gradually recover the links or nerve circuits if they are stimulated when the brain goes through a certain emotional state.

The hypothesis is that there is a neural circuit that exists in the interconnected parts of the brain responsible for fear and helps the patient become accustomed to fear during contact therapy. In order to determine the role of this neural circuit as well as whether it can be stimulated to prolong the therapeutic effect, the researchers simulated this situation in mice, causing them to fear a kind. certain noise by . injecting electricity (an electric current causes a slight shock) to the mouse's feet whenever the noise is emitted.

Once the mice were afraid of the noise, they were treated with similar exposure therapy. This time the mouse was told that scary noise but was not electrified anymore. Researchers conducted observations and when therapy began to work, they applied a neural circuit connected to the basolateral ganglion amygdala (BLA) - the fearful center and nucleus accumbens (NAc ) - central relax in rat brain.

The connection between the two feared and happy centers called by researchers called BLA-NAc suggests that if the fear is not as painful as expected (initially electrified, no longer injecting electricity, no longer causing pain ) then the brain will understand that this is a form of relaxation. With this link, the team actively tested the neural circuit stimulating effects in the sessions of contact therapy for mice. To stimulate, they let the mice drink sugar water whenever they heard the noise or directly affected the neural connection by chasing the beams of light transmitted through a fiber-optic cable implanted in a genetically altered mouse. to receive such stimulation.

The connection between the two fear centers and the happiness is called the BLA-NAc circuit by researchers.

The results showed that for mice with BLA-NAc-stimulated neural circuits, the therapeutic effect lasted about 55 days longer than those treated without stimulation. Similarly, light-stimulated mice also achieve longer therapeutic effects.

The next step for the team at MIT is to learn about the mechanism that represses the fear of this neural circuit and determines whether nearby neural circuits work in the stimulation process that makes mice afraid or not. as well as observing the unexpected behavior of mice against fear. Hopefully, one day their research will be able to improve therapies for those with debilitating phobias and PTSD.