Scientists Can Use A.I. To Erase Your Fears

‘Plenty of therapies do exist to help people overcome their fears. But as a team of Japanese and British researchers explain in Nature Human Behavior, these generally involve confronting people with the thing that scares them, either to show that there’s nothing to worry about or to condition the person to associate the fear with something positive…
…The researchers used a combination of brain scans and artificial intelligence to pursue an easier form of therapy. In a small study of 17 people — so, yes, there’s a long way to go before this could become commonly available — the researchers first conditioned new fear responses in their brains by giving them small electric shocks as they looked at particular images. The subjects’ brains were scanned throughout, giving the researchers a sense of the neural activity patterns associated with this newfound fear.’
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