10 24 25 CU Psychology Professor Dr Susanna Molas explains 'Jump scare' science

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Movies.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Spooky season is here. You may be someone who enjoys
the jump scares of a haunted house or the thrill
of a horror movie.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
I certainly do not, or maybe you avoid the scares
like me. A new CUS study explores how the brain
responds to fear and why it can trigger a freezer
flea reaction. Joining us on the koa common spirit health
hotline is doctor Susan Animals, senior editor of the study
and Assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

(00:29):
at CU Boulder. Good morning, doctor Mos.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Good morning, How are you okay?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hey?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Tell us a little bit about how this study was conducted,
because a haunted house for a mouse sounds like it
could be a kid's book, you know, if you give
a mouse a cookie, if you give a mouse a
haunted house. How do you describe this experiment?

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, just it's a very basic setup in which we
have some sort of a projector screen that displays an
expanding shadow and that mimics an approaching of an auro predator,
and animals, naturally they have this natural inkstinct of freezing,

(01:10):
as you said, to assess this potential danger, but also
run away. And avoid being attacked by a predator. And
this paradigm has a lot of a psychological component. I
was going to a haunted house in which you would
see a potential thread that is never actually giving you

(01:30):
any harm.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, so, doctor Mallas, it looked like the mice first
started where they were fleeing away from the shadow, and
then started to be a little more okay, hesitant, and
then they started walking like nothing was really happening.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
What does that mean for.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Us when it comes to people that like myself who
are horrified of haunted houses, get scared all the time,
it doesn't matter how many times I walk through it,
and then other people that are like, it's fine, I
don't even need to worry about it.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, that's a great question. So actually, it would be
interesting to look at these neural sequins over the brain
regions that we have identified and see whether those in
people that always get scared, whether those brain regions keep
being activated and there is less kind of a learning

(02:13):
component or being less frightened. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
I'm one of those people who shies away from movies
like you know, neither of the Living Dead or the
Texas Chainsaw massacre, or I just keep my hands gripping
the arm rest and my eyes shut most of the time.
Is there a brain circuit critical for orchestrating the threat
response when you see these movies?

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yes, that's actually what we have identified in the laboratory
that there is a revision in the brain that is
called interpoduncular nucleus or IPN, and it is highly activated
when there is like the initial presentation of a threat.
But as soon as there is a repetition and a

(03:01):
learning that this threat is not aversive, the IPN is
less recruited. It helps orchestrating that printed experience that was
not harmful, needs to reduce fancy responses.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
But oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
I was going to say, like, looking at IPN as
a circuit orchestrating the learning aspect of thread responses, that's
a good start.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
But if we watch these movies over and over again,
do we tend to get numb to real danger?

Speaker 1 (03:38):
I would say, like that is you might need some
experimental setup to actually make this conclusion in terms of
in our animals in our laboratory setting, animals would start
getting some contextual information and reduce their threat if it's

(04:00):
put it in the same context. So we would need
to find a parallel to see whether this touch the case.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
The study is called jump Scare. Science explains how the
brain responds to fear and it's Doctor Susanna Molas, senior
author of the study and Assistant Professor in the Department
of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU Boulder. Doctor Molas, appreciate
your time this morning.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Thank you so much.