Think your fear of spiders away

If you have a fear of spiders then the last thing you might want to be doing is thinking about or crawly arachnid friends. However, a new study has shown that thinking about spiders is exactly what you need to do if you want to overcome your fear.

The new study was based around exposure therapy which involves a person gradually being exposed to the object or thing that causes their anxiety reaction. The idea of exposure therapy is that a new “safe” memory is formed to replace the old fear-inducing memory. Unfortunately the new memory can be replaced by the old one again some time later. What the new study has found is a way to make the new memories become more lasting.

To understand how this works we need to understand something about how memory operates. When a person is reminded of something the memory becomes unstable and is then re-saved (reconsolidation). If you disrupt the re-saving process the recreating of the memory can be disrupted and the memory that is saved can be changed. Hence, a fear memory can be weakened or erased but those old memories can be difficult to disrupt.

The idea of exposure therapy is that a new “safe” memory is formed to replace the old fear-inducing memory.

In the new study, people with arachnophobia were exposed to spider pictures while measuring brain activity in the amygdala, a section of the brain linked to fear. They found that activation of the fear memory via a mini-exposure 10 minutes before a more extensive exposure led to significantly reduced amygdala activity in comparison to a control group. Avoidance of spiders also decreased in those people who had the mini-exposure in a way that correlated with the degree of amygdala activation.

So a little exposure, if you can endure it, can make those fear-based memories unstable and can help replace them with nicer ones of your eight-legged friends.

Source: Current Biology