As it’s the second Fri 13th this year, here’s some good news for those readers with paraskavedekatriaphobia (that’s a made-up fear of Friday the 13th by the way), as scientists in Amsterdam have suceeded in blocking human fear responses using Propanolol.
Because they are cool, they seem to have decided that the best way to test this was:
A: show volunteers a big, scary spider.
B: give them an electric shock at the same time.
(Man I love science). Apparently administering Beta-Blockers at the time prevented the memory of these events linking with inherant fear associations, so the victims were’nt scared the next time round. While this may seem like a complete waste of time, it does have uses in ES’s favourite thing: War! Basically, imagine legions of crack troops,or indeed legions of ill-equipped cannon fodder, all of them with no fear at all of being shot at. While the US rely on total coverage and we go for training, there are …other countries…out there where manpower isn’t really a problem that this would suit. Not to mention making it much easier to get creepy crawlies out of the bathtub(and possibly getting rid of my irrational fear of blind summits).
LINK (Phenom)
