Extinguishing a fear requires both the reduction of the original fearful response and the active replacement of that response with a new, positive association.

“Contrary to popular belief, it is not going to work to simply extinguish a fear. One needs to extinguish a fear andor trauma and replace that fearful or traumatic memory or idea or response with a positive response.”

The lower fear response measured in a brain scan was likely the result of nurture through long-term practice rather than nature.

“And I think that the to me the obvious thing is that it was more nurture, not so much that was nurture that basically just practice. I think what you're saying is that the repetition of what you do over a very long period of time blunted your amydala response.”

Humans possess innate evolutionary predispositions to fear certain environmental threats like heights and spiders.

“We are actually born or research has shown that we're born with certain predispositions evolutionarily sort of programmed that that we're more likely to be fearful of certain things like spiders or heights”