A haunting song comes on the radio. A stranger on a bus has the same voice as an intimidating bully from your past. Whatever the trigger is, it brings back something you’d rather forget as the past takes over, blurring out the present.
Maybe you freeze in your tracks until someone next to you gives you a gentle nudge — hey, you okay?
Or maybe you get the urge to get away.
This response is known as conditioned fear.
To understand it better, scientists study this process in animals. They pair a harmless cue with an unpleasant experience until the cue alone triggers fear.
For decades, researchers using rats as subjects primarily looked at freezing — pressing pause on all rodent business and staying still — as evidence that the animal learned to be afraid of a particular prompt. But as a Northeastern University team confirmed, there’s another possibility. The exact opposite behavior — darting from corner to corner — can also signal learned fear.
A study by Julia Mitchell, who recently earned her doctorate in psychology at Northeastern, and psychology professor Rebecca Shansky examined both responses and the brain mechanisms behind them.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
