Differences in brain structure between people with specific fears and healthy people
What is it about?
A large-scale study on the question of whether specific phobias are linked to changes in the structure of the brain. Data from thousands of patients and healthy individuals from a global network of collaboration partners were brought together for this purpose.
Why is it important?
Changes were found in the brains of those affected that went far beyond the previously assumed extent. It was also found that two subgroups of phobics - animal phobics, who tend to show fear and fight-or-flight behavior, and blood-injection-injury phobics, who can also experience feelings of disgust and even fainting - actually showed partly different changes in the brain. A final interesting finding of the study was that the aforementioned differences to healthy individuals were only found in adults with specific phobias, but not in children and adolescents, in whom transient fears are normal in terms of developmental psychology.