Noa Morillo.
1rA Batxillerat.
Survival instinct - Natural reaction of our body to keep us safe and alive.
Fear - An emotion that warns us from danger and activates this survival instinct.
These reactions are produced in the brain, specificly at the amygdala.
This topic it's an uncharted "place" because even though we know where it's located, most of the brain is unexplored, and we don't know how to control it and how it fully works.
Why we explore it?
We explore this because of 2 principal objectives.
Progress in survival - Mainly to heal diseases like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (after a traumatic event, it can cause fear, anxiety and flashbacks), to help people to deal with anxiety or phobias so they can carry on with their lives better.
Knowledge - To understand why some people under fear can react and other people freezes. We're intending to manipulate our brains to be more fearless and to manage better situations of high stress and fear.
Journey
Scientists are the pioneers, who using brain scans, and with psychologists help, can see how our neurons act under danger and stressful moments.
They will see millions of neurons sending electrical signals and how this signals change under this situation of danger and stress.
Risks
It can be hazardous to expose people to brain scans too often, because it could produce cancer. If we manipulate the brain at some point to change our brain to be more fearless, and we're not well-prepared, the patient could fall apart. And finally it will be irresponsible to remove completely the fear, because it's what keeps us safe.
Predictions
Probably in the future scientist will be turning down the fear in soldiers who are more probably to give up if there is a war. And I think that by 2100 panic attacks and PTSD will have disappeared almost totally.