you're basically look quite silent in that condition by contrast the visual cortex is still doing some amount of response in terms of trying to figure out what it seeing everything we looked at here how can we relate this to like my writing it understand aspect of fear and how i deal with it. there are a couple things i think are relevant for you in particular one of them is that you do experience a fear of what can happen i remember my 1st attempt after the 1st stick crashes i was scared i was nervous i was shaking. but you show a really strong ability to down regulate that. that circuitry that's involved when people are anxious or afraid you can control that to enough of a degree that allows you to actually go forward to do the tricks to do the jobs.

beyond a great ability to clamp down on fear also appears to get an extra rush from overcoming it dr zones has studied how thrill seekers have a greater amount of dopamine a kind of reward chemical flowing through their brains. but we found is that where interest centered was something that's highly motivating they get a stronger response to for you i think you know throughout your life there's been that whole to do it. so you're telling me a little bit about preparing a new job yes like when it comes out a new doctor zoned fearlessness is that the heart of what it means to be human if we think about evolutionary history human spread out across the entire globe and then they're relatively short amount of time it looks like how how did we do that if you had to be able to overcome fears of doing certain things that hadn't been

done before. the folks who can do that may have a real advantage. so people like carl might be at the vanguard of human evolution. could it be that getting scared is actually good for us. no other creature on earth likes to get scammed quite the way humans. misread it all 6 6. why do people pay to into haunted houses and risk area. the data they have. chucked over for us is a 27 acre stream park and we have all throughout the property. if they came out ph d.'s in haunted house design sociologist. would teach the course

she's here in pennsylvania with patrick on appeals to give him some of the science behind his scans a finely tuned mix of psychology and physiology this room does a good job of taking childhood. dolls things that we remember and regard with a lot of. basically defiling really create such a big decision and such a violation of our child that things that we think are supposed to be joyful and happy and now they're all the sudden the exact opposite i remember a lot of light nightmares when i was younger and it had to do with things in my room. that. we mix real actors as well as props so with a chaotic like very loud music they're not 100 percent sure what's going on.

our startle reflex does get saturated after repeated start all in. quick succession . you start to tune it out. and here you have a result of the senses but it's in a confined space just enough time to really get the system ramped up and then move on to something else a dead customer doesn't get oversaturated. my smelling hurts fires no we burn a device to emit that odor to immerse the customer our sense of smell is such a powerful sense it's tapped into our memories in such liar and ways it's the only sense where we're actually sensing molecules from the environment that trigger the neurons to fire is a sensitive sense to tap into because if you do use too much discussed or us now that is so overwhelming it can quickly take

a. out of the experience of disgust and fear are different in the brain and the body the focus turns to just escaping that disgusting smell. has traveled around the while visiting haunted houses haunted forests roller coasters and just about anything else designed to scare. that's great. to better understand the formula for. one thing she's not is that it's often things that deviate just a little too much from the norm the most. clowns are terrifying people always wonder why are people afraid of clowns but really they have more in common with monsters than happy things because they have painted faces that makes their facial expressions really difficult to read you have somebody who has a painted on smile but their mouth is actually frowning you can't really get an

idea of what they're feeling or what they're going to do and it's dissonance it's our brain saying is this person you know safe or not so they really are the perfect monster. what do you think how was it you could do little or you know was crazy rape is like a rollercoaster of emotions because it's almost immediately scared and then it's almost a sense of relief when i left right we found that people you know after they have come out of the attraction and had a moment to collect themselves a feeling of almost euphoria because you've got all the endorphins that are released while you were scared and now you're safe the natural high is not just the intensity it's the relaxation that happens afterwards to. maybe a scam asta but tendering the ultimate experience is not as easy as it seems. a fact not lost on video game designers who are taking fear as fun to

a whole new level. when we sort of to scare somebody there's click to mean ways we look at it. the easy scare is the jump scare it's that leap out catch you by surprise kind of moment that is actually almost more startling than scary as far as i'm concerned the more effective way is kind of the hitchcockian way to do things which is to lure you here and extend that moment the anticipation of the scare that's when we grab your heart and we start to squeeze just slowly at 1st a little tighter returning to the point where you're saying ok just enough get it over with rat firm and has helped design some big names in horror games including eternal darkness. he also teaches game design and george brown college in toronto.

rat is advising one group of students on a game they call rebuff. so rebirth is a 1st person horror game bet places the player in the role of a mother who's lost her infant daughter and has undertaken a cult ritual in an attempt to resurrect her child. we join her in the middle of this ritual to sort of see it through its conclusion in her suburban home where things are getting very very creepy. they've sent them project to theresa lynch of ohio university who uses video games to stop the fear these that we're placing on your feet are going to have sharing your skin conductance levels and what it's doing is it's ending a very very minimal electrical impulse being sent through the sensors that's interacting with the amount of sweat that's being produced in the glands of your foot along with the horror class or. amnesiac the doctor sent to rezone has agreed to test drive rebuff with us student alexis to see how its feel factors out on

video games provide us this very interesting context in which we can study fear responses you have the ability to make decisions in the game with an agency that is not available and less interactive media to resist equipment plants the plants right skin conductance and facial expression allowing ha and her assistant to break down the fear response into 3 stages as true in video games as they are in real life. in the pretty encounter stage this is basically when you're might be a little bit anxious if you're in an environment that is signaling to you that there may be threats lurking. but is that the 2nd stage is the actual encounter the body rams stopped for a fight or flight. when

. the distance between her and the ice bags has narrowed. now if that threat is approaching us then we enter into what's referred to as the circus strike stage where you're going to have to make a decision about whether you're going to try to run away from the threat or you're going to try to fight it. i don't know about it. now actually lives around i didn't . pay out so that's occurred over over a one on the scale so that was a pretty was the most dramatic change that we've seen so far. in the game isn't over but this plan is dumb. so we're just testing everything out on our end to make sure everything's working good to reason and the rebuff designers discuss how findings they especially want to know about the role of the senses in their game. their various. this is our.

we think of visual stimuli as being the thing that's going to be more scary just because it can be more extreme but when we are able to orient to visual stimuli in our environments we know a lot about it so i think there's a monster there it is i see it i know where it is now i can track it now i can respond to it we're actually much less shark in terms of our ability to detect and orient to sound so sound can definitely heightened fears sponsons because i am prepared ninnis without really giving the player something to latch on to you just a simple little blast is really all you need it's it's cheap it's a fish of above all with so much about fear being learned from video games people are turning to video for treatment. well 1415 like a cut just we remember having this fear. site in general is

embarrassing for me today. look at bit deeper into what it is. if i could read it rid myself of that means and. michael ampitheater has come to the university of quebec in gatineau to try out therapy with virtual reality see that how you see that death is really cool and because there is no lead she can actually forward jump. talk to stefan is a pioneer in its use and has the world's most developed view on lab for this very purpose 1st of all perhaps to put on this have sat. together with his assistant. mabel put michael through his virtual pacer's emotional part of the brain limbic system kicks in within 12 within seconds and the logical part of the brain comes afterwards so it means that we get emotional before we get larger so in virtual reality 4 percent sufficient virtual similar part of the brain that deals with

emotion believes or reacts as if it's true and even though it's not too late because emotions are there and what we want to do and therapies build your strength in controlling those emotions it's confidence who want to build confidence that is safe because it is that you're not drawn by the clear for the for it and confidence that if you feel your growth you can stay in control and actually pull back at your pace when you go to. the 1st step is for michael and to assess the severity of michael's condition we want to see what point you can climb up the ladder comfortably as soon as you search feeling that you don't want to keep going up you simply start if you come back. it's best.

if you are unafraid it's easy but when gripped by fear the imagination runs wild. the latticed dirty great. good. job michael now you could come down michael stops at the 5th wrong and can go no hi this treatment. so you simply drop this it was your son you could. call the choice to go. back at the lab a deep sinkhole has opened up in michael's new reality he must begin by moving towards it a big part of who wants to get a hold with a. body of. rose in state we want to show your body that it's ok to be close to the ledge largest

assault out are you able to just bring your arms down just a bit. slowly bring them down to your side. progress is slow but sure eventually michael attempts to walk a plank over the abyss ok my mother. was still there because. there is that what is. great as always try to convince you basically there are stages you're trying to get that says a look of i'm doing it it's 5 years. what makes virtual reality such a powerful therapy is that patients can do what is impossible or too dangerous in real life. one of the basic things i want to do for fear of biases is it actually the whole book that. so the further you go the less fear the. feel the emotion of the feeling rushed into my stomach given i have been jumping.

on the counter of 3 michael will leap into the abyss. one to take. back. if it's not. my thing just go with my body just for. the. one truth that. at that. if so were it because they thought of the was that. i was out this is no this was longer so there it cares a few more jumps and michael feels that he's gained some monster over his fear.

now it's back to the gym. patients usually do 8 to 10 v. on sessions before they hope to see a real improvement but michael is keen to try again. he did so but it would. come out that. yesterday when we did test shots or the 1st step you know we got up to today. that's a light one so 678 died as tracy so yesterday froze here today 1st there and that's amazing progress especially since as. i was with just one session michael has nearly doubled his height while no one is saying

he's conquered his fear he appears to be while on the way actually has. fear of heights there's a widespread phobia good some deep and common fears innate. that is exactly what david rocker son would like to know he scares by bears for a living to see when fear takes root in the mind. you get a startle response from babies very early on babies will blink and move back from a looming object. that's not necessary evidence of fear it's in could just be an innate mechanism to avoid objects that are about to hit you. there are perhaps no other creatures as universally feared as these. i think the fact that so many people have fears of snakes and spiders even though they're not afraid many of the faces of the live shows the evolutionary significance of them so i got me thinking

what would cause this privileged status for these snakes and spiders and so i started thinking how would i test that. how that wrecks in one sense of the infant cognition this is maddie yes ok so today we're going to be running mattie in an experiment that tests how babies look at things like snakes and spiders and how they learn about the features on the properties of those things are back ok ready maddy there that is like yesterday. were. all. trackers there's not such ng for signs of fear he's looking to see what captures the imprints attention. we show babies schematic versions of snakes and spiders and then we track how long the babies live in each of these images compared to scramble versions of the same age. and we find that if 5 months of babies will track a snake like image longer than they will scramble versions of the snake and they

will do the same thing for spiders and the longer a schematic spider than at scrabble versions of the spiders but could it just be a familiar pattern or shape that catches the eye so we've tried using flowers only say no effect for flowers which is about logically possible stimulus no effect for rodents or sharks. so it seems unlikely that is apart from for a biologically plausible shape it seems rather that babies have this very specific bias to look at space snakes and spiders in particular and this correlates nicely with what we know about adult fish westlake the spiders are in the top 5 non-human animals fish at that adults have but rather than proving innate fear david rackets and believes this is proof of a kind of warning defense system it seems as if there is no innate fish babies have to learn to fish but i think that some things have a privileged status when it comes to fear letting things like snakes and spiders

these are things the baby seems to learn to fear more rapidly than other things like cars. or cigarettes or god. kimmons have a full of ted rapidly. because individuals who didn't die. they were bitten and they die and those genes were passed on. so unless someone around the infant reacts the child won't necessarily be afraid when they see a snake. but as boys and girls grow their differences do arise and david rock isn't has a 90 pound why. women are 4 times as likely to be fearful of snakes and spiders. over evolutionary time any new i'm willing to protect their family or to go to fight or to get resources or hunt with it but not being selected this makes it so the genes for being fearful of men have been selected against but if

a woman dies of baby is more likely to die than if the father dies so women likely have a valve to be somewhat safer to protect themselves and thus protect their own shot and so the genes for this specialized mechanism fairly quickly passed on and it spread through the population. somewhere among the millions of people in the us their lives a woman who knows no fear how identity has been kept a secret for over 30 years you could walk by how on the street and never know. and yet her super power is helping unlock the mystery of how feel works in the mind . dr justin feinstein is one of the few people in the wild who knows who she is and what she's like i've had a chance to work with her both in and laboratory settings and also in real world settings for about 15 years. she's known only as ass. and

she lacks fear because she lacks a part of her grain. she is one of the only humans walking around earth without her nicola. she has this condition known as feet a disease and for a reason that science still has not figured out the condition will go into the brain and selectively calcified you make a lot on both sides of the brain and this is exactly what happened to patient s.m. . there was a lot of people around her who were part of the drug trade. that had reported to the police that she didn't want any of these people in her community one day she was sitting outside of her apartment and a stranger comes out of the blue puts a gun to her head and yells the top of his lungs. and then runs off.

about 20 minutes after this occurs the police knock on her door. because a neighbor saw this unfold they were quite concerned. and the police said you know explain what happened who was this guy and she was very surprised to even see the police it didn't register on her radar that this was a serious of that that it just occurred. as am's extreme condition maylon signs to finally understand how feo walks in the brain. dr feinstein has spent years of his life trying to scare ass am not even the scariest of films like this one caused her to flinch and then he decided to threaten her from within. internal threats these are threats that are coming

through the body itself through changes say your heart rate or your respiratory pattern and when the brain processes those changes it interprets it as fear or in some cases even. this is going to measure your. heart rate in oxygen saturation just as he is doing with this woman in his lab dr feinstein decided to see what would happen if he interfered with as ams respiratory system. first time we tried this was with what's known as 35 percent c o 2 when the body detects the intake of too much carbon dioxide it can become a mom before during and after each breath rate how much use i do you feel using this. normally people feel some anxiety. or hypothesis going into the experiment was that i would not experience fear or

panic to the c o 2. as took a single vital capacity breath to. be finally found her kryptonite . elicited immediate fear response. she referred to it as the most intense fear she's ever felt in are entirely. it was extremely eye opening i think if you could have looked at my face that it would have been sort of the look of a deer in headlights and with that one breath signs learned that the amygdala is not the brains only fear center this fear that your life is in danger and could end at any moment. does not require the. it somewhere

else of the brain this is. what our research is currently trying to do is figure out where is this other pathway besides advancing for science as am is inspiring dr justin feinstein to dream a little to dream about the evolution of human fear what's fascinating to me about s.m. is the fact that she's lived a half a century. without the middle. and somehow she's managed to survive and i think that tells us something important about the evolution of species. we still live in a dangerous world threats are always going to be. but we're living in a society that has basically endowed us with all of our basic survival needs. when you don't have to live in a world of saber tooth tigers and lions attacking you. maybe that's one fear is no

longer a necessary emotion. but we're not there. we're all in this together it was the slogan on social media back when the corona pandemic started. around the world it is since then become clear that the few are suffering the much economic inequality and the coal fires the to reinforce each other. every 30 minutes on d w. e coli africa. drought instead of rainy

season in rwanda climate change is threatening harvests. a startup is now increasingly yields it's out in forms farmers about the plants water needs and solar energy and sure is chiefly rikki. klieman smart africa. 90 minutes on d w. every day counts for us and for our planet. good ideas is on its way to bring you more conservation. how do we make see the screen how can we protect habitats what to do with all our waste.

we can make a difference by choosing smart new solutions overstrained said in our ways. google ideas to implement a series in 2000 d.w. and online. this is the w. news and these are our top story is the european union's top officials have met with turkey's president in an attempt to improve relations between the 2 saw threats of talking about everyone says he wants to turn a new page in his relations with europe but european commission president herself and a lawyer and council chairman charles michel expressed deep.