Fear inhibition
Fear inhibition is recognized as an individual risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders but the neurobiological mechanisms remain unknown. Anxiety is associated with impaired fear inhibition utilizing the AX+/BX- conditional discrimination procedure that allows for the independent evaluation of startle fear potentiation and inhibition of fear. This fear is a mixed blessing for animals. Fear is protective and absolutely necessary to animal survival. Nevertheless, fear that is indiscriminate displaces many crucial activities of life, like eating, sleeping, and having sex. It is therefore not enough to learn to be afraid of dangerous things, it is just as essential to eliminate fear of the safe ones and to tune fear to the degree of danger.
Scientists have measured that, this fear increases heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiological changes, as well as in a number of behavioral responses including freezing and the potentiated startle reflex. Posttraumatic stress disorder can develop in some individuals after exposure to an event that causes extreme fear, horror, or helplessness. This PTSD is categorized into three clusters known as ,the first cluster of symptoms includes re-experiencing of the traumatic event through intrusive thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks, and related phenomena that are often produced by reminders of the traumatic event and the second cluster is characterized by avoidance symptoms including loss of interest in social situations and emotional detachment and the third cluster includes psychophysiological reactivity in response to trauma-related stimuli including exaggerated startle, elevated perspiration, and shortness of breath.
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