“Fear of spiders, sharks, snakes, heights and other phobias could be cured by a simple injection which prevents people from learning to be afraid, claim scientists.
A team of researchers have found that the brain may be able to be ‘re-programmed’ to overcome some of our most basic fears.
Scientists claim that because fear is a learned habit, they could be able to switch off the part of the brain that generates those emotions with a simple jab.
Early tests showed that goldfish given a dose of the drug lidocaine were unable to be scared.
Researchers in Japan say the findings, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal, Behavioural and Brain Functions, would be a relief for people who suffer chronic phobias that affect their everyday lives.”
Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, KirstyJ)
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What if you have a phobie of injections?
What about fear of injections?
But this sounds a bit creepy. Some fear is indeed unreasonable, but not to be afraid of anything is very much /not good/. Well, I expect there is (or will be) some way that it will leave you with a reasonable fear of unhealthy things.
another “miracle” phobia cure? right. and if actually worked…we could all be fearless cannon fodder.
Thats fair enough and would be great but as i take it it is not phobia specific and would actually stop the person having these injections being scared of anything…. the inability not to be scared could be bad as it stops us from doing things which could harm us…..
And what about people who don’t commit crimes for fear of being caught/imprisoned?
but sureley this could backfire. isnt fear useful ?
fight or flight?
My thoughts exactly Scott…but seriously, my daughter is 13 and is terrified of injections and the word ‘vein’, and even after many visits to a local child psychologist, can’t seem to overcome her fears – So as fabulous as this cure sounds like it could be…I can’t see that it could help me and mine…It does sound very exciting research though…so thanks!..x
Yes, if you manage to catch someone right after the intitial fear stimulus and then SHOOT LIDOCAINE DIRECTLY INTO THEIR BRAIN, you may prevent phobic responses… Somehow, I think phobic responses would be very low in my list of worries when faced with a procedure like that. Except phobia of the needle jabbing into my head, maybe.
What about fear of pain? Surely this is a little over simplified…
I’m surprised that Berber Anna seems to be the only one to notice that in this study the lidocane was injected directly into the brain. The only way that would be generalizable to humans is if they had a permanent cannula inserted into their cerebellum. “Fear of needle prick” isn’t even relevant here.
These kinds of pharmacologial interventions are not necessary – most specific phobias are very treatable with psychotherapy.
This is ridiculous. Curing fears with drugs is really fucked up especially when we got tools like NLP, Hypnosis and others. Using drugs is of course good business plan.
Fear of injections is pretty common, still, I think some people would take one injection to stop a lifetime of fear of them
Fearless like… a sociopath for example?
I’d actually be pretty pleased to see this be realized. I have a serious, serious phobia, one that really does dictate almost everything I do in life, has made me develop OCD, and after many years I have come to the conclusion that the only way I could ever be completely stress free each day is if I got rid of my phobia completely, instead of just trying to control it. I don’t know, maybe its bad to want to try get rid of something completely, esp like this, but I’d really welcome it.
Anyway, I’m not sure the jab actually stops you being scared of everything, it’s a ‘re programming’ thing. So it stops you from reacting in a certain way towards what you’re scared of. Most people react a good way when they are scared of something, but phobias are a bit different…
Am I the only one with the sinister mind here and only sees an army of fearless super soldiers marching across the landscape ready to sack bexill on sea?
Seriously though, I would like to know what the lack of fear would do to morality.
Has to be a very dangerous drug! Fear is instinct without instinct we would be Lemmings, look what happened to Dodos because they didn’t fear early settlers! Therefore this is the end of the human race!
This is almost as bad as the drug designed to reduce the weight of people who eat too much food. Masking the unpleasant symptoms of a problem doesn’t actually solve much. The problem is still there and the poor person slowly becomes demendant on the mask to function.
Considering the proven effectiveness of hypnosis to resolve phobias, this is just another example of the profit motive out of control – the only winner here is the company who produces the drug. The pharmacutical industry has always and will always put profit above actually helping people, demonstrated by an abysmal track record of being sued for doing so.
@Sara
Do a search for: Richard Bandler phobia cure. Find a competent hypnotherapist if you need more help, stay away from psychologist’s (just my opinion).
Sounds like an ideal drug for military use.
I´m sure that people wih extreme fear for something that prevends them from living a normal life would be happy if a cure would come up (if therapy and such for some reason don´t work\’.
Fear of heights is not something I´d see as something someone needs to get a cure for that badly, although it will be kinda weird having to ask someone to do you windows or such if you dont dare to get on the stairs.
I´d suggest therapy. Good old fashioned therapy for lots of phobia. They already dope people for way too many things to easily. Without taking care of the real reason behind all the problems.
Fear is a weird thing ..but a simple body response, which can be easily triggered and will not always be recognized as fear by the person him-herself. It can be sensed as something else at times.
No one seems worried that this was probably developed as a weapon (the ultimate soldier, anyone watch J.I.Goe recently) and it’s not generating as much interest as i thought something like that would ? Fear is a survival tool it\’s probably not wise to mess with it because of one irrational fear. Isn’t it like wiping ur slate clean from that first memory where u touched something hot and ur fingers jerked away.