News Researchers' Preclinical Trial Upends Conventional Wisdom About Responses To Fear

[MyPTSD]

For more than a century scientists have recognized 'freezing' as the natural fear response. But in a new study found that female rats often respond to fear by 'darting.' The findings not only raise questions about the veracity of previous studies that rely on freezing to indicate fear, but could also lead to better treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dead Link Removed

 

[Stickler]

I like feeding wild sewer rats, they're like squirrels on crack.

 

[scout86]

For more than a century scientists have recognized 'freezing' as the natural fear response.

I had to go read the whole article just to be sure this was right. Scientists thought that freezing was THE fear response? How in the world did they come to THAT conclusion. Freezing is A fear response, or can be. There are a lot of possible responses to fear and I've thought all along that was pretty obvious. And it depends somewhat on the individual involved, both their personality and their experience and it depends somewhat on the situation too. I've never watched the "rat electrocution" experiments, but I would EXPECT many of the rats to go through a phase where they panic and try to run. And expect more "freezing" once they found out escape was impossible.

This is an interesting article, but it's not really true that the consensus was that freezing is THE fear response, is it?

 

[Kintsugi]

I was confused by that, too, @scout86. I mean, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, right?

 

[joeylittle]

I think the only empirical study that existed was in support of the 'freeze' response.

Flight is a common sense one that is accepted (scientifically) as a norm.

Fight, same.

Fawn, that's observed in some animal behaviors, but I don't know that it's had the same kind of scientific examination as freeze.

Though I do find it funny: dart - they explain in the article, "as if the female rat were trying to escape from something".

Um, yep. Escape the threat.

I think darting is an application of flight, myself.

 

[Kintsugi]

I was confused by that myself, @joeylittle. If mice only froze in response to a threat, Simon wouldn't have a mouse problem! :hilarious: