The dread of having something hanging over your head is too often worse than the thing that you are dreading…

In order to better understand how people make decisions when the outcomes are known to be unpleasant, a team of Emory neuroscientists led by Gregory Berns, MD, PhD, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine the areas of the brain that are activated when someone experiences dread. The study, which was supported by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse (NIDA), was published in the May 5, 2006 issue of the journal Science. The study was part of a research program in the growing field of neuroeconomics, an area in which neuroscience methods are being applied to economic questions.

“Most people don’t like waiting for an unpleasant outcome, and want to get it over with as soon as possible,” explains Dr. Berns, an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. “The only explanation for this is that the dread of having something hanging over your head is worse than the thing that you are dreading. It is a commonplace experience, but standard economic models of decision-making don’t deal with this issue. So, we decided to take a biological approach and see what happens in the brain that might cause people to make such rash decisions.”

“Taken together, the anatomical locations of dread responses suggest that the subjective experience of dread comes from the attention devoted to the expected physical response, and not simply a fear or anxiety response,” explains Dr. Berns. “The key factor seems to be that extreme dreaders devoted more attention toward the part of their body that was about to be shocked. This means that dread is not quite the same as fear or anxiety. These findings underscore the very real nature of dread. The dread associated with things like medical procedures or public speaking can probably be alleviated by diverting one’s attention during the waiting period,” says Dr. Berns. “The benefits could be substantial if it means that we act more rationally in terms of getting healthcare, or decreasing the psychological toll of dread and anxiety.”

Media Contact: Kathi Baker 08 May 2006
Emory University Health Sciences Center