By: Lindsay, Austin, Kayla & Drew Phobias & Fears By: Lindsay, Austin, Kayla & Drew

What is a phobia… A phobia is defined as a mental or emotional disorder due to events that have occurred in a persons life that may have caused extreme sadness, depression, trauma, or excitement. These unfortunate situations become stored in a persons memories and cause them to relive past experiences when reminded of them.

Cont… Your memory is connected with nerves in your brain, therefore if you have a bad memory of something, many people correlate the bad memory with certain objects or people. This connection between the objects and the bad memories can cause tremors, night sweats, nausea breathlessness and paranoia. Most phobias begin as a child because of occurrences that were perceived as traumatic to the child.

Causes of a Phobia… A phobia is brought on by a specific situation or stimulus in the brain. The cause of fear and phobias is thought to be in the amygdala. A person with a phobia has an altered fear response to the point where they don’t process dangerous situations correctly. Instead they over react to them. The brain senses conditions of fear and the pre frontal cortex evaluates the situation and decides whether it seems like the situation is dangerous or safe. It then sends an “all clear” message to the brains fear center. Phobias have been linked to anxiety disorders and post traumatic stress disorders in their reactions and severity.

Causes of fears Areas of the brain such as the amygdala and the hypothalamus are activated when fear is sensed and cause the release of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Fear, unlike a phobia is adaptive and you can overcome it. Fear is a neural circuit that keeps the body going in dangerous situations. The stimuli is transferred along neural pathways to the amygdala and is evaluated based on outside influences.

Common Phobias… Some phobias are very common and are not severe in their reactions such as: Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders Claustrophobia: Fear of enclosed places Acrophobia: Fear of heights Necrophobia: Fear of death or dead things Belonephobia: Fear of needles

List of phobias… Pteronophobia: Fear of being tickled by feathers Anuptaphobia: Fear of staying single Bibliophobia: Fear of books Cibophobia: Fear of food Didaskaleinophobia: Fear of school Ephebiphobia: Fear of teenagers Francophobia: Fear of France or french things Gymnophobia: Fear of nudity Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia: Fear of the number 666 Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia: Fear of long words Kathisophobia: Fear of sitting down Methyphobia: Fear of alcohol Mycophobia: Fear of mushrooms Parthenophobia: Fear of young girls Porphyrophobia: Fear of the color purple Sexophobia: Fear of the opposite sex Walloonphobia: Fear of walloons Zeusophobia: Fear of God

Bibliography http://www.listofphobias.org/what-causes-phobias.htm http://www.anxietytreatment.ca/specificp.htm http://serendip.brymawr.edu/exchange/node/1749 http://www.nativeremedies.com/ailment/overcoming-fears-info.html http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/10/07/phobias-associated-with-altered-brain-response/3080.html http://abcnews.go.com/technology/story?id=97841&page=1