from the Toronto Star, Friday September 16, 2005:





Want to get scared out of your mind?






JOSEPH HALL
STAFF REPORTER

University of Toronto physiologist Min Zhuo thinks he knows the source of all of your fears.





It's a little spot in the prefrontal cortex of the brain that sits about 8 centimetres behind your forehead.





By locating this fear-full spot known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and manipulating the neurochemicals that activate it, the researcher believes, we may one day be able to ease fearful memories — anxiety and phobias, even post-traumatic stress — out of our lives.





"By understanding the biomolecular mechanisms behind fear, we could potentially create therapeutic ways to ease emotional pain in people," Zhuo said in a news release on his findings, which were published yesterday in the journal Neuron.





"Imagine reducing the ability of distressing events, such as amputations, to be permanently imprinted in the brain."





A boon to humankind? Of course. But then, fearlessness itself may be something to fear.





The emotion plays a critical role in childhood development, points out Katharina Manassis, a psychiatrist who studies child and adolescent psychology.





"I can think of a couple of instances where a little bit of fear can actually be helpful," she says. "One is in avoiding overly risky behaviour."





Relatively fearless youngsters are more prone to accidents and injury than those who are timid.





Though intense fear can cripple a child academically — think of math anxiety —"there is some evidence that having a low level of fear ... can actually enhance alertness and the ability to do academic tasks," Manassis says. "When people have no fear whatsoever, they often get bored with academic tasks."





As for fear's role in risk avoidance, U of T medical ethicist Bernard Dickens says there's already a drug that can elevate bravery over timidity and common sense: "It's called alcohol."





A fear-reducing wonder drug would set up an "ambivalent" set of ethical questions, he says.





It could be used to enhance people's judgement by ridding their lives of irrational or baseless fears. But it could also be abused, for example, by governments to create fearless soldiers.





U of T criminologist Richard Ericson says fear of legal retribution — being punished — also plays a big role in preventing crime. "It's a very important human emotion." Fearlessness can encourage risk-taking — including criminal behaviour.





Whatever the consequences, Zhuo's research on the fear spot "is critical as it changes how and where scientists thought fear was developed," he said.





The area Zhuo and his colleagues are studying, with the help of experiments done on mice, is laced with receptors that are activated by mental shocks.





Known as NMDA receptors, these brain cell molecules allow neuro-electrical pathways to be formed in ACC brain cells. These pathways become the conduits for our fears and phobias, Zhuo says. But to form the pathways, the receptors must be activated by a subset of proteins, one of which is NR2B. Zhuo says that manipulating NR2B levels or absorption in the fear zone could actually ease our established terrors or prevent new ones.





"We now have a circuitry here to work (with)," he told the Star.





In a time of terrorist att