In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explore the neuroscience of fear and trauma and how to effectively process and eliminate traumatic responses. I explain why successful fear treatment requires both extinction of the old fearful response and replacement with a new positive association—not just cognitive reframing. I also explain how the threat reflex activates specific circuits connecting the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and dopamine systems, and why detailed recounting of traumatic events progressively reduces their physiological impact. Finally, I review evidence-based approaches, including prolonged exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, discuss how five minutes per day of deliberate stress through cyclic hyperventilation can rewire fear responses, explain the critical role of social connection in activating neural pathways that reduce trauma, and share supplementation options for managing anxiety. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AGZ by AG1: https://drinkagz.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (0:00) Introducing Fear & Trauma (0:17) What is Fear? (1:03) Autonomic Arousal: "Alertness" vs. "Calmness" (2:05) Fear vs. Stress & Anxiety (9:20) "The Threat Reflex": Neural Circuits for Fear (20:50) Cognitive (Narrative) Therapies for Fear (26:35) PTSD Treatments: Ketamine, MDMA, Oxytocin (33:11) Deliberate Brief Stress Can Erase Fears & Trauma (35:51) Nutrition, Sleep, & Other General Support Erasing Fear & Trauma (38:18) Recap Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're going to talk about the neuroscience of fear.
We are also going to talk about trauma and post-traumatic stress disorders. I think it's fair to say that in the last 10 years,
The field of neuroscience has shed light on not just the neural circuits, meaning the areas of the brain that control the fear response and the ways that it does it, but some important ways to extinguish fears using behavioral therapies, drug therapies, and what we call brain machine interfaces.
Today, we are going to talk about all of those, and you are going to come away with both an understanding of the biology of fear and trauma, as well as many practical tools to confront fear and trauma. To give you a sense of where we are going, I'll just lay out the framework for today's podcast.
First, I'm going to teach you about the biology of fear and trauma, literally the cells and circuits and connections in the body and chemicals in the body that give rise to the so-called fear response and why sometimes, but not always, fear can turn into trauma. I will also describe the biology of how fear is unlearned or what we call extinguished.
You're going to learn, for instance, that we can't just eliminate fears. We actually have to replace fears with a new positive event. So what is fear? Well, fear falls into a category of nervous system phenomenon that we can reliably call an emotion.
I think it's fair to say that emotions include responses within our body, quickening of heart rate, changes in blood flow, things that we experience as a warming or a cooling of our skin, but that there's also a cognitive component. There are thoughts, there are memories. There's all sorts of stuff that goes on in our mind and in our body that together we call an emotion.
So let's talk first about what fear isn't. Most people are familiar with stress, both as a concept and as an experience. Stress is a physiological response. And it is fair to say that we cannot have fear without having several, if not all of the elements of the stress response. However, we can have stress without having fear.
Likewise, people are familiar with the phrase or the word rather anxiety. Anxiety tends to be stress about some future event, although it can mean other things as well. We can't really have fear without seeing or observing or experiencing some of the elements of anxiety, but we can have anxiety without having fear.
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