Fear is powerful, but so is the feeling it often sparks in others: compassion. The Fear Factor is nominally a book about the first but delves deeply into the latter—the urge to help other people that ...

Fear is often thought of as a negative emotion but is actually a natural protective response to perceived threats or danger. It helps us survive. When we experience a situation that causes fear, it ...

Individuals who have experienced life-threatening, stressful situations can later be prone to showing a fear response in the absence of a threat. This is called a generalized fear response and now ...

Learned fear responses enable animals—including humans—to flee or freeze in the face of a perceived threat. But if these behaviors persist after the danger lifts, they can become paralyzing and ...

In the shower scene from the film Psycho, Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) screams in terror as Norman Bates tears open her shower curtain. (Photo by Bettmann via ...

New research published in Science identifies the brain biochemistry and neural circuitry that cause generalized fear experiences. Here, neurons are shown in cyan and retrograde tracers shown in yellow ...

Our survival response is innate and, by definition, creates an aversion to pain. The part of the brain responsible for rational decision-making comes secondary to the part that reacts purely on ...

A recent investigation revealed that fish oil supplements do not enhance cognitive performance. In older adults predisposed ...