Dossier
The complexity of an emotion. A psychiatrist and a neuroscientist approach fear from different angles. Both strive to create new therapies and promote a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying anxiety.
Text: Fabienne Hübener
U
ndine Lang steps up to the lectern. The room is packed, and all eyes are on her. The professor of psychiatry has faced this situation dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. Still, before her lecture, her pulse quickens, and her hands begin to tremble. In situations such as these, she consciously calls to mind the methods she uses to stifle her stage fright: “I start by concentrating on maybe two or three people in the audience, and throughout my lecture, I’ll focus mainly on them,” explains the Head of University Psychiatric Clinics (UPK) Basel. “ Then the feeling of fear quickly goes.” But not every fear can be regulated so elegantly. Fear is one of the first emotions that babies develop after birth. It may not be a good feeling, but it
“ We might recognize certain circuits in the brain. But our findings up to this point are ultimately just highly simplified descriptions of the brain’s activities.” Andreas Lüthi
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UNI NOVA
139 / 2022
is crucial and protects us from potential danger. In time, children learn to differentiate between things that are truly dangerous and those they need not fear. If a fear of harmless situations or objects persists into adulthood and severely restricts a person’s daily activities, it is referred to as an anxiety disorder. These include generalized anxiety disorder, in which those affected worry constantly for no apparent reason, phobias (see page 20) and panic disorder. Those with the latter live under the constant threat of being overwhelmed by severe panic attacks at any time. A complex inner state A racing pulse, trembling muscles and feeling sick – those are the palpable, physical symptoms of a brain producing the emotion of fear. In his book Projections, neuroscientist Karl Deisseroth from Stanford University describes fear as a complex inner state that can be deconstructed into its constituent connections between bundles of neurons in the brain. He believes that we will soon be able to decode the language of those neurons. Andreas Lüthi from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel disagrees. He and his team use experiments on mice to decipher the mechanisms behind normal and pathological fear in the brain. “ We are only at the very beginning,” says the neuroscientist. “ We might recognize certain circuits in the brain and know, for example, that the amygdala plays a key role in evaluating emotions related to specific situations. But our findings up to this
