In a new study, researchers found a novel way that could help combat such anxiety: When life triggers excessive fear, use a safety signal.
They found a symbol or a sound never linked to adverse events can relieve anxiety through an entirely different brain network than that activated by existing behavioral therapy.
The research was conducted by a team at Yale University and Weill Cornell Medicine.
For as many as one in three people, life events or situations that pose no real danger can spark a disabling fear, a hallmark of anxiety and stress-related disorders.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy and antidepressants help about half the people suffering from anxiety, but millions of others do not find sufficient relief from existing therapies.
In the study, a safety signal could be a musical piece, a person, or even an item like a stuffed animal that represents the absence of threat
The approach differs from behavioral therapy, which slowly exposes patients to the source of their fear, such as spiders until a patient learns that spiders do not represent a significant threat and anxiety is decreased.
And for many people, exposure-based therapy does not truly help.
In the study, participants were conditioned to associate one shape with a threatening outcome and a different shape with a non-threatening outcome.
The shape associated with threat alone was presented to subjects, and later subjects viewed both threatening and non-threatening shape together.
Adding the second, non-threatening shape—the safety signal—suppressed the subjects’ fear compared to the response to the threat-related shape alone.
Brain imaging showed this approach activated a different neural network than exposure therapy, suggesting safety signaling might be an effective way to augment current therapies.
The team says exposure-based therapy relies on fear extinction, and although a safety memory is formed during therapy, it is always competing with the previous threat memory,
This competition makes current therapies subject to the relapse of fear—but there is never a threat memory associated with safety signals.
The lead author of the study is Paola Odriozola, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at Yale.
The study is published in PNAS.
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