Tarantula Terror Study Captures the Ebb & Flow of Panic in the Brain
Step 1: Put study subject in MRI machine. Step 2: Show subject video of a huge, hairy tarantula creeping toward their toes. Step 3: Watch panic light up in the brain.
For a study out in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dean Mobbs and colleagues put their subjects through this fright fest to sort out how the brain responds to different parts of a threat. It's not all about the presence of a creepy crawler, Mobbs found—it's whether that creepy crawler is creeping close