Divergent Thinking (15 page)

If fear is “all in our heads,” how does it get there?

Before we can answer that question, we need to understand what Tobias in
Allegiant
describes as “a complicated, mysterious piece of biological machinery”—the brain.

FEAR IS A GIFT FROM OUR ANCESTORS

Evolutionarily speaking, each of us is the conclusion of a success story. We exist because our ancestors lived at least long enough to reproduce before they drowned in a shipwreck, fell off a cliff, or were lunch for a cave bear. And fear played a role in that success. When it comes to survival, fear is a powerful advantage. It not only drives risk avoidance, it gives us our best shot at surviving when danger is unavoidable.

Charles Darwin, the sharp and observant mind that perceived the possibility of evolution, was very interested in fear. He conducted an experiment using himself as the subject. Here is his description of it:

       
I put my face close to the thick glass-plate in front of a puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens, with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck at me; but, as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced.
⁴

Why was Darwin so spooked?

It wasn't because he was a coward. Far from it. Darwin signed on for a voyage around the world aboard a wooden ship less than one hundred feet in length.
The Beagle
was the sort of ship known as a “coffin brig,” notoriously hard to steer and prone to sinking. Darwin went because he wanted to collect scientific specimens, to slog through South American jungles crawling with snakes and spiders and critters with hungry bellies and sharp teeth. Field science is not a career for the squeamish. Then, after he returned, he published ideas that ran contrary to common belief and made him the target of harsh criticism. Every single one of those decisions required courage. But when he visited the zoo, he couldn't control his body's reaction to the striking snake.

So what was going on? After repeated trials, Darwin was intellectually prepared for the puff adder's attack. His brain
knew
the glass barrier provided absolute protection. He wasn't surprised by the sudden appearance of the animal; he
knew
the snake would strike. But whenever it did, that certain knowledge evaporated and Darwin flinched. Fear got the better of him.

When it comes to understanding fear, we have an advantage that Darwin didn't. He could only observe the behavior of animals, including himself, and record the ways in which they all responded to danger or perceived threats. He could not see what was happening inside the bone box of the skull. Thanks to technology (fMRIs) we can actually watch a living brain at work. We can see which parts of the brain are active in response to pictures of spiders, snakes, and angry faces. We can, essentially, see fear happening inside our heads.

One thing that these studies have revealed is the outsized contribution to survival played by a little biological gizmo the size and shape of an almond called the amygdala.
⁵
It might not look like much, but when it comes to danger, it is the emergency first responder.

Remember the symptoms of fear that Tris experiences as she prepares to jump? They are all part of the wave of responses the amygdala activates. It is the amygdala that prods the hypothalamus to release the cascade of chemicals and nerve impulses that jolt the entire system into fight-or-flight mode.

Her heart was “pounding so fast it hurts.” That rapid heartbeat is a signal of changes through her circulatory system. Blood is flowing faster and more abundantly to the muscles in her arms and legs, the large muscles that are essential to running and defense. Her brain is also getting a richer supply of oxygen and energy through the bloodstream. Meanwhile, her arms are noticeably pale because the capillaries nearest her skin have contracted as part of the system-wide diversion of blood supply.

The “lurch” Tris feels in her stomach could be linked to a quick shutdown of her digestive system. As important as digestion is to survival in the long term, in the short term the energy required for that process can be put to better use elsewhere.

Even the goose bumps that rose on her arms are survival oriented. Granted, human goose bumps may not seem like much of a defense now, but once upon a time, our furrier ancestors might have benefited. Goose bumps are caused by the pilomotor reflex, which is the same reflex that makes a scared kitten puff up to three times its actual size. Appearing bigger can discourage potential enemies and might make the difference between being eaten for lunch and living to reproduce.

Why do all of these fear symptoms happen so fast? Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have been studying the role of the amygdala in fear responses and have discovered that certain kinds of sensory information—like sudden, loud noises—aren't processed and interpreted. Instead, they are transmitted directly to the amygdala, jolting it into action. This fear circuit takes only milliseconds.
⁶
Since the information traveling on this shortcut isn't processed by the conscious part of our brains, the reactions aren't under conscious control; everything that happens, from changes in blood flow to the eruption of goose bumps, is involuntary.

Short of surgically removing the amygdala, there is no way to break this fear circuit. You can't “decide” not to respond because the reasoning, decision-making part of your brain isn't consulted. That's why Darwin couldn't stand still when the puff adder struck; he was being protected by a part of his brain that didn't take time to think things over. It was getting quick-and-dirty information—and acting immediately to keep him safe.

So, one important answer to the question about how fear gets into your head is this: you are born with it. Even newborns exhibit the fundamental fight-or-flight protective responses long before they can fight or flee. But there is another way that fear gets into our heads: we learn it.

FEAR IS A LEARNED RESPONSE, OR HOW TO TERRORIZE A BABY IN A FEW SIMPLE STEPS

Little Albert was about nine months old when he was used (and, it must be said, abused) as the subject of a psychological experiment done in 1920. If you have ever been around a little human at that age, you know they are curious creatures, interested in the world, and it can be a full-time job keeping them out of harm's way. This is how I imagine Little Albert to have been, and when I watch the movies made in the laboratory, when I see how interested he is in dogs, bunnies, white rats—even fire—I see a little brain learning all it can. Through his own experiential exploring (and hopefully with some parental protection), Little Albert would have learned that it's a bad idea to pet fire or to put his fingers in
that
part of the doggie. He would have learned about real dangers in the real world. But the researchers intervened and exposed him to a process that changed how he learned about fear.

While Little Albert was just looking around the room, thinking his little baby thoughts, the researchers banged on a metal pipe and made the sort of noise that causes the amygdala to go to red alert. Little Albert was—like you, me, or Charles Darwin—unable to control that fear response. Then the researchers started systematically linking that noise, and the fear response it evoked, to a little white rat. Before this “fear conditioning” Little Albert was interested in the rat. By the time he had been thoroughly “conditioned,” he reacted to the sight of the rat with fear. It wasn't necessary to make the noise because his amygdala had learned to associate the animal with the horrific clang. It took no more than the sight of the rat to cause fear in Albert. Even worse, his little brain generalized his experience. At the end of the experiment, Little Albert was terrified of all furry things, even fur coats and Santa's white beard.

Sad as the story of Little Albert is (and it makes me want to cry), it did point the way to an important possibility regarding the control of fear. If fear can be learned through conditioning, it might also be possible to unlearn it. Through the process known as fear extinction, a fearful person is repeatedly exposed to a stimulus that causes fear. All of these encounters take place in a controlled situation where nothing bad happens. The person is encouraged to be aware that the fear they are experiencing is an overreaction. Eventually the stimulus is “unlinked” from the fear response. Called counterconditioning, this system for unlearning fear essentially erodes the connection in the brain between a stimulus and a response. The technique is used therapeutically to assist those living with PTSD, chronic anxiety, and irrational phobias. While struggling with generalized anxiety, Veronica Roth herself found relief through counterconditioning that helped her retrain her brain.
⁷

FEAR IS CONTAGIOUS, OR SEEING IS FEELING

There is at least one more way that fear gets into our heads: it's contagious. It doesn't spread by germs. We catch it via sight. When you see another experiencing fear, you are very likely to experience fear yourself. So fear can spread just fine without help from Jeanine's hallucinogens, fear serums, or transmitters. There are cells in your brain dedicated to making sure you catch fear from others. Those cells are called mirror neurons. As an Erudite scientist explains in
Insurgent,
“Mirror neurons fire both when one performs an action and when one sees another person performing that action. They allow us to imitate behavior.”

Brain scans have caught this special category of cells at work and made it clear that they offer a wonderful advantage: they make it possible to learn that it is a bad idea to touch a hot stove without getting blistered fingers ourselves. Merely observing another's experience gives the brain the information that it needs to make the association between stimulus and response. That is a significant benefit in terms of survival.

Remember when Tris was on the brink of becoming the first initiate to master her fear and jump into the Dauntless headquarters? Mirror neurons—and Jeanine
⁸
says in
Insurgent
that Tris has an unusually high number of them—were active in her brain. Not only was her amygdala causing her to experience fear in response to direct sensory experience, the mirror neurons in her brain were registering the example of the poor, fallen girl.

But “catching fear” isn't the only function of mirror neurons. They are also essential to developing the social bonds that link us. The uncontrollable inclination to imitate others is called
modeling
by psychologists, and it is a shortcut to learning the ropes of social communication and cooperation. Mirror neurons don't just make us flinch when we see someone else stub a toe, they also make babies react to facial expressions by imitating them. Those shared facial expressions are the foundation of social bonds.

Our mirror neurons may have originally evolved to help us avoid danger, but they have grown along with other aspects of our human brains, like the ability to think symbolically and use language. And when we hear a story, watch a play, or read a book, they make it possible for us to become emotionally invested in the lives of imaginary characters—like Tris, Tobias, and the other people we “know” through reading and observing in our imaginations while we read
Divergent.
It amazes me. When we read about Tris and her mirror neurons, mirror neurons are firing in our brains, too.

This is why we can become immersed in a story and why the characters in it become so real to us. This is why, according to recent research, reading fiction makes us more empathic. Reading stimulates the activation of mirror neurons, the same brain cells that are key to caring about others. If you were horrified and saddened by the treatment of Little Albert, if you cringe when a contestant on
Total Blackout
weeps and gropes in the darkness, if you cried at the end of Tris' story, you may have exhibited another capacity of the brain: the ability to experience the suffering of another. You experienced the power of mirror neurons to make us empathize.

Unfortunately, there is a limit to the power of mirror neurons, and it is related to their power to connect to those around us. Our mirror neurons fire more easily when we see a face like the faces we already know, which, in turn, makes it easier for us to communicate and cooperate, but what happens when we encounter a stranger, someone different from ourselves? In one telling experiment, researchers hooked subjects up to EEG monitors and showed them a series of videos of men picking up a glass of water. When the person in the video was of a different race or ethnicity from the subject, the subject's mirror neurons were less likely to activate.
⁹
Less activity can translate into less empathy, and reduced empathy can change the way we respond to others. When someone knocks on the door and requests help, activated mirror neurons can mean the difference between a helping hand and rejection. Without an empathic connection, all that remains is an unknown, and we have already discussed how terrifying the unknown can be.

It is easy to confuse difference with danger and be afraid. When that fear is coupled with a justification, no matter how flimsy, violence can result. Fight or flight? When it comes to encounters with other human beings, all too often, the choice is fight.

THE FUTURE CHICAGO EXPERIMENT, OR LOW-TECH, SLOW-FORM GENETIC ENGINEERING

When Tris escapes Chicago in
Allegiant,
she discovers that her Divergence isn't a flaw, it is the desired result of a generations-long experiment with the goal of “healing” genetic damage. The cause of that damage? The direct manipulation of genes. David refers to it as “editing humanity,” but we call it genetic engineering.

Genetic engineering is the introduction or elimination of DNA in an organism. Say you want a plant that glows in the dark. You might try to take the firefly genes responsible for bioluminescence and introduce them into a plant's DNA. More usefully, if you want to study a human illness but need an animal model, you could use genetic engineering to create mice with a similar problem by inactivating key genes. These “knockout” mice are providing insight into cancer, heart disease, aging, and anxiety. Outside of the laboratory, genetic engineering is playing an increasing role in agriculture, creating crops that are more disease or drought resistant and even “immune” to herbicides. This is, of course, very controversial. Many worry about unforeseen consequences. And that brings us back to David and the origins of the future Chicago project.