MRI scans aren’t just for ortho patients anymore: the UK’s using tarantulas to scare Magnetic Resonance Imaging “patients”—hoping to find the brain’s hot spots that turn on brightest during “freak-out” or full-blown panic mode.
To observe the brain’s panic-response network, researchers convinced 20 people to lay down in an MRI machine (inadvertently ruling out any claustrophobics in the study)--then fed high-resolution images, to trigger people’s senses to blow. No tarantulas were physically in the MRI tube, but patients didn’t know that they were receiving only high-quality images of the fuzzy and freaky creatures—that appeared larger than life. A tarantula was shown crawling closer , closer, and closer to the patient’s feet.
As the tarantula was shown “advancing” toward the patient, MRI scans grabbed flashes of brain activity from both the volunteer’s prefrontal cortex, the brain region associated with anxiety, then quickly switched to scan the mid-brain spot area that’s associated with intense fear.
While the spider study’s research title may not be the most intriguing, of “Neural Activity associated with monitoring the oscillating threat value of a Tarantula,” actual results from the National Academy of Sciences could be fascinating—to break open the subject of fear.
A glimpse into the brain’s danger-tracking system, from The MRI-Tarantula study, has thrown researchers a pertinent piece of key info: neural terror subsided when the tarantula spider was retreating, “regardless of the spider’s absolute proximity”. So, basically, as long as the spider was believed to be moving away rather, the distance it was moving away wasn’t relevant—MRI participants began to relax, as long as they thought the spider was definitely on its way out at some point.
Scientists believe that the spider scans will make it easier to diagnose and treat patients who suffer from clinical phobias—to treat issues surrounding severe fear.
“We first show that multiple (brain) systems are involved in fear and that a goal of future research should be to try and understand which parts of the [brain’s] system break down,” says doctor Dean Mobbs, an author of the study. "We now know that fear is not in one place in the brain, but is represented in many different areas that are highly interconnected," Mobbs says, as the scans show by highlighting active brain regions.
"Different types of fear can tap into many of the same parts of the brain's fear network, from fear of taking an exam to fear of meeting a bear in the woods. If we can understand this, then we can better engage people with phobias and other types of fear. To cure we must first understand.”
Why tarantulas? Ironically, “The UK has one of the highest amounts of spider phobics in the world. This is despite the fact that we have no deadly spiders in the UK,” says Doctor Mobbs.
The doctor admits: “I mainly used spiders because I have a slight fear of them.”