Science in Spooktober: Fear on the brain

October 31st, 2023

Written by: Andrew Nguyen

Spooky season is upon us and that means the time has come to settle in for a scary movie screening. Whether it’s the newest A24 thriller movie or a cult-classic slasher movie, people keep coming back for more. The pleasure we experience while watching horror movies can seem paradoxical. Horror movies challenge our sense of “recreational fear” in creative ways, ranging from building up anticipatory fear to flashing jump scares and gorey visuals, giving the viewers an immersive experience into the story. These films have different ways of horrifying us, creating new opportunities for researchers to understand how our brains respond to different types of fear. 

Acute vs Sustained Fear

Horror movies have new and creative ways of instilling fear in their audience. One classic example of how horror movies elicit fear is through jump scares that abruptly show terrifying scenes. When the killer clown flashes on the screen out of nowhere, the viewer is smacked with this sense of immediate terror which is referred to as acute fear. Suspenseful thriller movies use film styles that keep their audiences holding their breath, anticipating what frightful scenes might come up next. Sustained fear heightens the senses, often using silence or suspenseful music to build on the anticipation of something scary. Those moments in the movie theater when the room is so silent with anticipation you can hear a pin drop, right before they show something scary is what we call sustained or anticipatory fear. 

Scary movies make us feel like we’re under threat, sending us into a state of fear. The ability to identify and quickly respond to potential threats, often called fear encoding, is an important feature of our everyday lives. How the brain accomplishes fear encoding from different is still largely unknown. One study conducted at the University of Turku in Finland tackled this question using a brain imaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Using this technique, they were able to assess neural activity across the brain while subjects watched a horror film. Surveys of top rated horror movies were conducted and “The Conjuring 2” and “Insidious” were selected based on “jump scare” criteria, recognition by name, prior experience seeing them, and how participants rated these movies in terms of “scariness” and quality. The researchers kept track of when the jump scares and moments of suspense were in each movie so they could monitor brain activity during jump scare and suspenseful scenes. They found that acute and sustained fear involve different neural processes, and that they coordinate neural activity differently across multiple parts of the brain¹.

Our brains consist of several networks that are made up of brain regions that are involved in processing some type of information. These networks can be active with other networks in synchrony to process information and change how we feel emotionally and physically or drive some sort of behavior². The brain responds to acute fear by activating a network of brain regions distributed throughout the brain that are thought to be involved in decision making and responding to threats. We can think of this as meaning jump scares activate response networks in the brain that might reflect the immediate “fight or flight” feeling of anxiety. However, during periods of sustained fear, brain areas related to senses like vision and hearing tend to be active. In addition, sustained fear also synchronizes neural activity in networks that are associated with threat responses across the brain during these suspenseful scenes. During the build-up of suspenseful moments, we evaluate incoming threats by activating brain networks involved in processing our senses and making decisions. Sustained fears keep us at a state of anxiety, increasing vigilance and changing how we react when the threatening stimulus actually hits. For example, during suspenseful scenes when the lights are flickering and we know the monster is going to show up in the mirror, we hold our breaths and brace ourselves for when it shows up. When the monster shows up after so much suspenseful build up, there is synchronized activation of networks involved in sensory and emotional processing, and decision-making that responds to threat¹. This network response can help us feel more or less terrified when we brace ourselves in the face of sustained fear. 

Identifying and evaluating potential threats is an important aspect of our everyday lives. Fear is a response that can be protective, despite often being thought of negatively. In fact, one study found that people who are more likely to watch horror movies and who were “morbidly curious” were more resilient to the psychological toll of the COVID-19 pandemic³. However, fear is a flexible and complex emotion that engages many different regions of the brain to influence our perception. The different responses to acute vs sustained fear helps us understand how our complex brains have evolved distinct pathways to respond to threats. Acute fear is encoded with activity in brain regions associated with making quick decisions and responding to threats, giving us the immediate jolt of fear from jump scares. Meanwhile, sustained fear activates sensory areas which is accompanied by hypervigilance during suspenseful build-up. Sustained fear also activates brain networks associated with decision-making and emotional processing to help us anticipate reacting to fearful experiences. Understanding how and why our brains developed distinct pathways to respond to different types of fearful or threatening challenges can highlight why we have such abrupt responses to jump-scares or explain the neural underpinnings of the suspense we feel when watching a psychological thriller. 

References

1. Hudson, Matthew, et al. “Dissociable neural systems for unconditioned acute and sustained fear.” NeuroImage 216 (2020): 116522.
2. Babaeeghazvini, Parinaz, et al. “Brain structural and functional connectivity: A review of combined works of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging and electro-encephalography.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15 (2021): 721206.
3. Scrivner C, Johnson JA, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen J, Clasen M. Pandemic practice: Horror fans and morbidly curious individuals are more psychologically resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pers Individ Dif. 2021 Jan 1;168:110397. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110397. Epub 2020 Sep 15.

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