The Biology of Fear

Overview

Journal Curr Biol

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Biology

Date 2013 Jan 26

PMID 23347946

Citations 169

Authors

Ralph Adolphs

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Each of us has felt afraid, and we can all recognize fear in many animal species. Yet there is no consensus in the scientific study of fear. Some argue that 'fear' is a psychological construct rather than something discoverable through scientific investigation. Others argue that the term 'fear' cannot properly be applied to animals because we cannot know whether they feel afraid. Studies in rodents show that there are highly specific brain circuits for fear, whereas findings from human neuroimaging seem to make the opposite claim. Here, I review the field and urge three approaches that could reconcile the debates. For one, we need a broadly comparative approach that would identify core components of fear conserved across phylogeny. This also pushes us towards the second point of emphasis: an ecological theory of fear that is essentially functional. Finally, we should aim even to incorporate the conscious experience of being afraid, reinvigorating the study of feelings across species.

Citing Articles

Roles of mediodorsal thalamus in observational fear-related neural activity in mouse anterior cingulate cortex.

Ramesh K, Nair I, Yamamoto N, Ogawa S, Terranova J, Kitamura T Mol Brain. 2025; 18(1):14.

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The Role of Disgust Certainty in Intuitive Thought Processing: Electrophysiological Evidence.

Li Z, Bao W, Wang Y, Yan S, Zheng H, Luo J Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2024; 17:3709-3719.

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PanicRoom: a virtual reality-based Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm.

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Neural decoding and feature selection methods for closed-loop control of avoidance behavior.

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The subjective experience of emotion: a fearful view.

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