January 3rd, THE BIOGICAL APPROACH

Ralph Adophs states in their paper The Biology of Fear that fear is "an intervening variable between sets of context-dependent stimuli and suites of behavioral response" (Adolphs, 2013). It is, from my understanding, a process which prepares the body to react to the perceived danger. Depending on the type of perceived danger, different sections of the brain is activated in a variety of ways, as there are separate neural systems for fear of pain, predators, and aggressive conspecifics. These parts may, rather than separate them as different types of fear, rather engage different forms of responses to said fears, namely fight, flight, or freeze (Adolphs, 2013).

These patterns all activate the amygdala, which process several feelings, including but not limited to, vigilance, ambiguity, unpredictability, and relevance. I believe these may be relevant to what one can consider an overarching dramaturgy of fear, which I will likely return to on a later date. The paper also mentions that not only fear and phobia activate the amygdala, but also pleasant stimuli such as music and sex (Adolphs, 2013). This, I suppose, can I suppose may be linked to Freudian concepts of fear, which I think I might also return to.

Furthermore, a big aspect in fear response is based on the distance, such as the approaching predator, and the intensity, for instance a sudden sound or increasing sound, of the fear inducing stimuli. The brain switches from active (flight) to passive (freeze) fear response dependent on distance of the predator, or if the threat seems to be approaching or receding. Fight relates to the perception of lack of escape from an approaching threat. Lastly, there are some other forms of stimulus attributes which I found interesting. Uncertainty is one of them, which includes temporal uncertainty (not knowing how long until something happens), the novelty of the stimulus, and knowing that one does not know much about it (Adolphs, 2013). I recon fear of the dark may be a good example of this, as it is the fear of not knowing what is in the dark which creates the response.

That’s it for today, I think. It has given me much to ponder; I am hardly a neurobiologist, so certain phrasings and neurological processes cannot be represented here in an educated form. Yet, I believe I have collected the most relevant information on these processes, and they will be used to reflected further analysis down in a few days' time.