{"id":240151,"date":"2026-07-02T02:41:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/fear-learning-circuit-shows-how-stress-disrupts-brains-ability-to-suppress-trauma"},"modified":"2026-07-02T02:41:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T07:41:58","slug":"fear-learning-circuit-shows-how-stress-disrupts-brains-ability-to-suppress-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/fear-learning-circuit-shows-how-stress-disrupts-brains-ability-to-suppress-trauma","title":{"rendered":"Fear-learning circuit shows how stress disrupts brain\u2019s ability to suppress trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/fear-learning-circuit-shows-how-stress-disrupts-brains-ability-to-suppress-trauma2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fear is often thought of as a negative emotion but is actually a natural protective response to perceived threats or danger. It helps us survive. When we experience a situation that causes fear, it becomes stored in our brain as a fear memory. These fear memories prevent us from touching a hot stove after being burned or from stepping onto a busy street.<\/p>\n<p>What about fear memories that take over? Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is caused by severe acute or chronic stress that disrupts the learning process designed to suppress fear memories. These memories then begin to negatively affect a person\u2019s quality of life.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, our fear memories can be suppressed through extinction learning. The original memory or fear isn\u2019t forgotten, but a new memory is formed and suppresses the original fear memory. However, extinction learning can become tricky in situations that involve traumatic memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fear is often thought of as a negative emotion but is actually a natural protective response to perceived threats or danger. It helps us survive. When we experience a situation that causes fear, it becomes stored in our brain as a fear memory. These fear memories prevent us from touching a hot stove after being [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-existential-risks","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}