The phobic brain: white matter integrity in patients with spider phobia

Spider phobia is characterized by excessive and unreasonable fear and avoidance-behaviour when exposed to a phobic stimulus. Previous research suggests that visually elicited phobic reactions deactivate prefrontal areas involved in cognitive control over emotion-triggering areas like the amygdala. The fear mechanisms in specific phobias could be explained by microstructural abnormalities in white matter integrity and may contribute to the understanding of the occurrence of irrational anxiety symptoms. A diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) sequence was used to acquire images in 30 patients with spider phobia and 30 ma…