Understanding your character's sixth-sense for danger: Here's how it works.

Credit: © Dario Lo Presti / Fotolia

Anxious individuals detect threat in a different region of the
brain from people who are more laid-back.
Characters having a sixth-sense for danger borders on cliché, a trope even.

 Yet, many if not most clichés are a statement of the obvious.  We as humans do have a sixth sense for danger, and as with most characteristics some of us have a sharper sense of impending danger, and some have less.

 Researchers in France are investigating the relationship between this sixth-sense and anxiety, how it functions in different people, and when it is a healthy reaction and when it's not.

 Is this sixth-sense extra-sensory?  Not from what I understand about brain science.  Significant research using fMRI and other technology reveals that most processing in our brain takes place out of the notice of our conscious mind, and alerts us to a potential threat in far less time than our conscious mind can register.

 So when a section of our brain notes an angry look on the face of someone staring directly at us in a social situation, we feel anxious.  This is our subconscious mind alerting us to potential danger so that our conscious mind can work to identify the threat.
*  *  *  *  *


Being anxious could be good for you in a crisis
Brain prioritizes threats, especially in anxious people

Seeing anger paired with a direct gaze produces 
a response in the brain in only 200 milliseconds.

New findings could help explain the apparent 'sixth sense' we have for danger in social situations, with the direction of a person's gaze being a crucial cue. People with non-clinical anxiety are particularly well poised for action.

The results in the journal eLife may help explain the apparent "sixth sense" we have for danger. This is the first time that specific regions of the brain have been identified to be involved in the phenomenon. The human brain is able to detect social threats in these regions in a fast, automatic fashion, within just 200 milliseconds.

Even more surprising for the scientists was the discovery that anxious individuals detect threat in a different region of the brain from people who are more laid-back. It was previously thought that anxiety could lead to over-sensitivity to threat signals. However, the new study shows that the difference has a useful purpose.
  • Anxious people process threats using regions of the brain responsible for action. 
  • Meanwhile, 'low anxious' people process them in sensory circuits, responsible for facial recognition.
Facial displays of emotion can be ambiguous but the researchers managed to identify what it is that makes a person particularly threatening. They found that the direction a person is looking in is key to enhancing our sensitivity to their emotions. Anger paired with a direct gaze produces a response in the brain in only 200 milliseconds, faster than if the angry person is looking elsewhere.

"In a crowd, you will be most sensitive to an angry face looking towards you, and will be less alert to an angry person looking somewhere else," says lead author Marwa El Zein from the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) and the Ecole Normale Supérieurein Paris.

Seeing fear in others triggers our sixth-sense
Similarly, if a person displays fear and looks in a particular direction you will detect this more rapidly than positive emotions. Such quick reactions could have served an adaptive purpose for survival. For example, we evolved alongside predators that can attack, bite or sting. A rapid reaction to someone experiencing fear can help us avoid danger.

"In contrast to previous work, our findings demonstrate that the brain devotes more processing resources to negative emotions that signal threat, rather than to any display of negative emotion," says El Zein.

Electrical signals measured in the brains of 24 volunteers were analysed while they were asked to decide whether digitally altered faces expressed anger or fear. Some faces displayed exactly the same expression, but the direction of their gaze was altered. A total of 1080 trials were carried out.

It has often been theorized that elevated anxiety, even in a non-clinical range, could impair the brain's processing of threats. However, El Zein and her co-authors instead found that non-clinical anxiety shifts the neural 'coding' of threat to motor circuits, which produce action, from sensory circuits, which help us to recognize faces. The researchers note that it would be interesting to determine whether the same is true for people with anxiety scores in the clinical range.

Story Source:  Materials provided by eLife.  Marwa El Zein, Valentin Wyart, Julie Grèzes. Anxiety dissociates the adaptive functions of sensory and motor response enhancements to social threats. eLife, 2015.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Girl Getaways Throughout the Life-Cycle

Image
" The importance of a girls' getaway (is) to reconnect intimate friendships which have an important influence on female identities ." Some of my buddies and I joke about the all-girl getaways our ladies take once or twice a year.  Our joke is that it is our job to stay close to the phone, bail money in hand.  Just in case. Over the years they have had some wonderful adventures, though they only came close to arrest once - for riding bicycles on a horse path in an exclusive, up scale resort.  (The private security guards drove Beemers, even.) Recently, an  article published in Annals of Leisure Research detaied  the different purposes and effects for those participating in girlfriend getaways over the life course and the relationship to the life-cycle of the women. The basis of the article was a study conducted by the authors featuring 79 women of different race, social class, nationality and marital and familial status. They were interviewed about their experi
Read more

The Downside of Being 'Class Clown'

Image
Source:  Bart's Blackboard Down side of being dubbed 'class clown' Class clowns' off-task antics amuse and delight their classmates during first and second grades, making them the most sought-after playmates on the playground in early elementary school.  But by the time these mischievous boys are promoted to third grade, they plummet to the bottom of the social circle as classmates' disapproval of their behavior grows, a new study found. Perhaps most worrisome is that by third grade, playful boys may be internalizing others' negative assessments and begin viewing themselves as social failures, possibly setting them on a course for a host of poor academic and developmental outcomes, said researcher Lynn A. Barnett, an educational psychologist and professor of recreation, sport and tourism at the University of Illinois. These sudden reversals in playful boys' social fortunes from first to third grade may be classmates' mirroring of teachers
Read more

How laughter leads to love.

Image
James Cagney rubs a grapefruit half in the face of Mae Clarke  in the classic flick, Public Enemy (1931), written by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright, adaptation for the screen by Harvey Thew.  Funny? Yes.  A rom-com?  Not really.  Great scene, though. Between romance novels and rom-com movies and television, there is a never ending, ever growing market for romance.  So what leads to romance?  Of everything, it is laughter.  Not at, but with.  So here's how it works:  Boy meets girl.  Boy gets the girl to laugh.  (Add a few tasty comedic or dramatic interludes), and viola, girl catches boy (after boy makes a complete horse's ass of himself,) and the happy couple goes giggling into the sunset.   Formulaic?  Very much so.   Greatly entertaining?  Very much so. Until kids, mortgage and divorce. . . but that's a story for later. Here's a report on laughter in romance, with a link to the full study in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * Laught
Read more

How true to life was Scrooge's change?

Image
Allister Sim as Scrooge in the classic film, A Christmas Carol (1951) Some years ago, I took a screenwriting class from Cynthia Whitcomb, a screenwriter with a list of produced scripts as long as my left arm, in which the transformative power of film and fiction was a main topic. Recommended Reading by Cynthia Whitcomb Click on image Her point being that people enjoy stories in which the main character learns something about themselves and becomes a better person because of it.  Think of movies such as Casablanca.  In the beginning, the main character, Rick, is obviously miserable, pushing away all but his longtime buddy, Sam.  He especially pushes women away.  Why?   Well, that's the story.  When Ilsa, his lost love, comes back into his life Rick is forced to confront his pain, and while he chooses to give up the girl, he ends up regaining his sense of self and a purpose in life.  The story of Casablanca is the story of Rick's catharsis.  People love that movie a
Read more

Black Lives Matter: The price of a slave in the18th Century

Image
Credit: Image courtesy of University of Cambridge A list detailing the names, ages and prices of slaves bought by British plantation owner William Philip Perrin from John Broomfield in 1796. Price of Britain’s slave trade revealed " What these letters reveal, apart from a total lack of empathy for their  human commodities is the sheer amount of money involved ." Letters and papers revealing in detail how human beings were priced for sale during the 18th century Transatlantic Slave Trade have been made available to researchers and the public. Letters discussing the value and sale of slaves in the 18th century, which provide a distressing reminder of the powerful business interests that sustained one of the darkest chapters in British history, are to be made available to researchers and the public by St John's College, University of Cambridge. The collection contains the business exchanges of an 18th century English landowner, William Philip Perrin, who
Read more