Question

Describe/depict/list the ‘high’ and ‘low’ roads of neural circuitry that process fear. The answer should begin with the brain receiving a sensory stimulus associated with fear (e.g., a loud bang) and end with how emotional, autonomic and hormonal responses are triggered.

Answer 1

It is established by research that Pavlovian conditioning and previous association with experiences facilitate the future course of emotional experience with events.. This means that in case a traumatic experience has generated fear to a stimulus in the past, it may a play a similar role in neural circuitry of the brain in future as well. These neural circuits are contained within three main functional units in the brain: a detection unit, responsible for gathering sensory information which signals the presence of a threat; an integration unit, responsible for incorporating the various sensory information and recruiting downstream effectors; and an output unit, in charge of initiating appropriate bodily and behavioural responses to the stimulus which poses as a threat. In parallel, the experience of innate fear also instructs a learning process leading to the memorization of the fearful event. This can be linked to the learning processes such as Pavlovian conditioning. Association lf stimulus and correspond emotion of fear leads to a permanent stimulus-response cycle subsequently. Also, while the detection, integration, and output units processing acute fear responses to different threats tend to be harboured in distinct brain circuits, memory encoding of these threats seems to rely on a shared learning system. This makes it an operational complex system which runs its mechanism independently every time a threatful situation is encountered. Suppose, a loud bang occurs (stimulus), this would lead all three functioning units carrying out their role of signalling, detecting, incorporating and provision off output. This is more of a reflex response whereby a stimulus leads to autonomic nervous system responding by generation of hormones and detection of fear by the brain.