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There are two types of people in this world: people who hate spiders and people who claim to tolerate these eight-legged arthropods. The American Psychiatric Association estimates that 9% of Americans have a specific phobia and that despite the efforts of the Spider-Man franchise to promote a pro-arachnid agenda, arachnophobia or fear of spiders remains one of the fears the most common. Arachnophobes can now (tentatively) rejoice – science can have a new and interesting method to appease their fears. A recent study found that exposing people whose arachnophobia score was high to fear at the exact moment their heart beat was related to reducing the severity of the phobia.
A specific phobia is an excessive and persistent fear of an object, situation or specific activity that is not usually harmful, according to the American Psychiatric Association. The new research, published in the journal Psychosomatic medicine, is based on the idea of an exposure therapy, which is often an effective way, even if it takes a lot of time, to treat specific phobias. This looks exactly like exposure therapy: patients are gradually exposed to their source of anxiety to help them overcome their distress.
Testing a sample of 53 participants who scored high for fear of spiders, the study badigned participants to one of three computerized exposure conditions, varying the timing of visualization with an image of the spider in their cardiac cycle.
Spider photos were presented to a group of patients at the rate of their heartbeat (when signaling cardiac excitation). The second group was exposed to images of spiders between their heartbeats. Finally, the third group saw the spiders randomly in the sessions, without their synchronization being badociated with their cardiac cycle. The researchers measured participants' anxiety and phobic reactions, as well as their physiological response.
The results indicated that the timing actually influenced outcome measures. Although improvements were observed in all groups, participants exposed to spiders at the rate of their own heartbeat showed the greatest reduction in their anxiety levels, physiological responses, and reported fear of heart attacks. spiders. Physiological responses to spider exposure were also particularly strong for this group. The main conclusion of the study is that the exposure of stimuli at the time of the cardiac cycle may present a therapeutic advantage for people with phobias that certainly deserves to be deepened. Phobias could one day be treated more effectively on a personalized basis, by synchronizing exposure to the patient's heart rate.
"Many of us have phobias – they can be spiders, clowns or even types of food. Treatment usually involves exposing the person to his fear, but this can take a long time, "said Hugo Critchley, one of the study's authors, in a statement:" Our work shows that the way we respond to our fears may depend on whether we see them when our heart beats, or between two heartbeats. You could say we're about to help people beat their phobias "
As someone who is still marked by terrifying "friend" of Hagrid's giant spider of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I do not really see my heart warm up so soon for these critters. But this research can be a step in the right direction.
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