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Courage involves taking action in a challenging situation instead of fearfully shrinking from it. These researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine actions by individuals afraid of snakes. While lying in the scanner, participants were asked to move a live snake closer to their heads and had to choose repeatedly whether to move it closer or farther away (i.e., advance or retreat). Meanwhile, the researchers measured neural activity, subjective fear, and skin conductance in participants and, to validate the paradigm, in subjects without fear of snakes, and in a subgroup of snake-fearing subjects with predominantly “retreat” choices.
In snake fearers only, activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and rig…