Clowns, spiders, ghosts, creaking floors, darkness = Surefire triggers known to scare the $h’t out of anyone.

playing to the most common fears is insurance for horror and suspense movie creators. After adding a few horror flicks under our Halloween masks, we know the formula: a strange noise is a cat at the first go, then a serial killer on the second. So why do we repeatedly get scared of the same things? I mean clowns… still… really?

Many of our fears arise during childhood and our brains methodically process them. The trick is to program our brains into deciphering between legit and wack threats.

Fear is a survival mechanism. It doesn’t matter if it we are facing the Bloody Baron, Ted Bundy, or Bozo the Clown, we are at our very foundation animals that are biologically wired to survive by addressing threats. This might be running away from that threat or by having an old $kool beat-down in the $treet. We depend on our brains to let us know what should and should not scare us.

Fear processing is managed by various divisions of the brain. The prefrontal regions, hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, and brain stem are just a few of the regions implicated in fear processing.

The Process: Seeing or hearing something scary triggers our thalamus to transfer that sense to the sensory cortex where it can be translated. Then the hippocampus processes the stimulus and tries to determine what is going on based on its storage of info; it’s dipping into our memory. Afterwards, the amygdala deciphers the realness of this threat by comparing it to the storage of memories that are related to fear. Finally, the hypothalamus responds accordingly with the “fight or flight” decision.

Dem Brains: Our brain processes scary things like how a computer manages data- it’s sequential, systematic, and uses stored info accumulated throughout our lifetime. Did a similar noise scare you in the past and was linked to an intruder? If so, then this gives a legit reason for your sense of fear within this context.

The Hippocampus determines from our learning experiences what we should and should not be scared of. So when the signal arrives here, memory files are checked for similar occurrences. Like, is it a cat or a murder coming in through your back door? Both of these scenarios have distinct sounds that may have been previously experienced by our sensory system (ears).

After the hippocampus does its thing, it tells the amygdala to chill or not. The amygdala gets hyped up via its specialized neurons after we perceive something frightening. If the threat is a hyped-up cat scenario, then the amygdala tells the hypothalamus, “yo holmes, we don’t need to be running or fighting right now”. If it’s the real deal, the hypothalamus is triggered to release hormones that will either have us beat the $h’t out of the would-be intruding murder or run like a muthaf’er.

Body $natchers: The hypothalamus communicates with our endocrine system to decide if fear or chill hormones are needed. Adrenaline and noradrenaline are the stress hormones released and flow through your veins to get your body moving accordingly. Your heart beats faster and breathing gets heavier when your brain starts to process fear-inducing situations. Some people might also lose motor activity and freeze in response to an apparent fearful scenario.

The Hype About Memory and Fear: If something frightened us as a kid, then our amygdala stores that association. This means that the next time we run into that scenario, even when we are 50 years older, that connection will be brought up naturally. Breaking the association for illusionary threats might be aided by “facing-your-fears”-type of therapy. If you are scared of the dark, then hang out in a dark room until you get over it and learn that nothing bad is going to happen. This is the most simplistic method, but many phobias go deeper than this and need more therapy. Many triggers of fear that have developed and remained from childhood have never been dealt with effectively, so it’s often difficult to decipher the real cause.

Bottom Line: Learning what is real and illusionary is the trick before getting your treats.

Fears:

Arachnophobia = the fear of spiders or other arachnid family members, like scorpions

Coulrophobia = the fear of clowns

Phasmophobia = the fear of ghosts

Phobos = deep dread or fear (Greek)

Brains:

Thalamus = takes whatever you sense and sends it to the area of the brain that is supposed to deal with it

Sensory Cortex = receives and processes all senses (sight, taste, smell, audio, touch)

Hippocampus = regulates emotions and memories

Amygdala = regulates survival instincts, emotions, and memory

Hypothalamus = links the brain to hormones

Igors in Lab:

Justin Kim M, et al. (2016) A face versus non-face context influences amygdala responses to masked fearful eye whites. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. doi:10.1093/scan/nsw110

Remmes J, et al. (2016) Impact of Life History on Fear Memory and Extinction. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 10:185. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00185

Shin LM and Liberzon I (2010) The Neurocircuitry of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety Disorders. Neuropsychopharm. Rev. 35:169. doi:10.1038/npp.2009.83