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 ...

The emotion of fear is a core part of the human experience. Our brains are wired to experience fear as a way to warn us that we might be in danger, such as when faced with a bear in the woods. But ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorders are often characterized by fearful responses in specific situations that the mind learns to view as threatening. These fearful responses ...