Preclinical studies on animals have identified brain pathways that drive quick, protective fear responses to "scary" sounds. New from JNeurosci, Emmanouela Kosteletou-Kassotaki and colleagues, from the University of Barcelona, expand on this work by exploring whether humans also have a brain pathway enabling quick fear responses to certain sounds.
Using publicly accessible data from the Human Connectome Project, the researchers examined links between different pathways in the brain and behavioral measures for emotion and sound processing. A pathway linking two auditory brain areas and a brain region involved in fear was associated with better hearing ability in noisy environments and increased self-reported fearfulness.
While a part of this pathway in the brain was previously described in humans, according to the researchers, this work reveals a new role for this pathway in quickly responding to "scary" sounds. Says Kosteletou-Kassotaki, "This pathway may be involved in the unconscious processing of acoustic fear, paralleling an already established pathway for unconscious processing of visual fear."
Elaborating on future experimental directions, Kosteletou-Kassotaki adds, "We want to see the link between this pathway and brain activity of participants exposed to fearful sounds. Given the implications of this work for individuals with high anxiety levels or psychiatric disorders, we also plan to examine whether this pathway is more strongly engaged in these populations."
