Inside the Anxious Brain

Full transcript

A woman sees a spider and instantly becomes frightened. Let's follow the journey happening inside her brain right now. Her eyes detect the spider, and the information travels to the thalamus, the brain's gatekeeper, deciding where the signal goes next. The amygdala recognizes a possible threat and immediately sounds the alarm, warning the rest of the brain that danger might be near. The hippocampus searches memory and context to understand what is happening, while the frontal cortex, like a library, offers information showing she is actually safe. When anxiety runs high, the alarm grows louder, racing like a fast five-lane highway, while calming information crawls back slowly along a small country road. Eventually, the brain realizes: it was only a spider. I am safe. The same alarm system can also react to a trauma trigger, making the brain feel as though something from the past is happening all over again.