Passage Two

A fascinating new study combines snakes with brain imaging in order to uncover neural mechanisms associated with “courage”. The research provides new insight into what happens in the brain when an individual voluntarily performs an action opposite to that promoted by ongoing fear and may even lead to new treatment strategies for those who exhibit a failure to overcome their fear.

Although there is a substantial body of research examining brain mechanisms associated with fear, far less is known about the brain mechanisms associated with courage, defined here as action ill the face of ongoing fear. “By measuring properly defined actions of either overcoming fear or yielding to it in an acute controllable fearful situation, one can render certain neural substrates of courage withstanding investigation in a brain research laboratory setting,”explains senior study author, Dr. Yadin Dudai from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

To study the neural mechanisms associated with moments of real-life courage, Dr. Dudai, Uri Nili, and their colleagues devised an experimental paradigm where participants had to choose whether to move an object closer or farther away from them while their brain was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The objects used in the study were either a toy bear or a live com snake. Prior to the study, participants were categorized as “fearful”, or “fearless” depending on how they responded to a snake-fear questionnaire.

As might be expected, the researchers observed that both high subjective fear and high somatic arousal were associated with yielding to fear and moving the snake farther away. However, somewhat surprisingly， bringing the snake closer was associated with either high somatic arousal (assessed by skin conductance response) accompanied by low subjective fear (assessed by fear self-ratings) or high subjective fear accompanied by low somatic arousal.

Brain imaging during the task revealed that activity in a brain region called the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC. correlated positively with the level of subjective fear when choosing to act courageously but not when choosing to yield to fear. Further, activity in a series of temporal lobe structures was decreased when the level of fear increased and the individual chose to overcome their fear.

“Our results propose an account for brain processes and mechanisms supporting a fascinating aspect of human behavior, the ability to carry out a voluntary action opposite to that promoted by ongoing fear, namely courage,” concludes Dr. Dudai. “Specifically, our findings show the importance of maintaining high sgACC activity in successful efforts to ova-come ongoing fear and point to the possibility of manipulating sgACC activity iii therapeutic intervention in disorders involving a failure to overcome fear.”

The purpose of the study about snakes and brain imaging is to find out________.

Which of the following statements is true about the study of brain mechanisms with courage?

When the snake was moved closer to the participant, they would show ________.

According to the brain imaging, when an individual chose to act courageously,________.

The conclusion drawn from the study is that________.