New ‘Unconscious’ Therapies Could Help Treat Phobias

If you’re terrified of spiders, a psychiatrist might suggest facing your fears through seeing pictures or getting close to the real thing—not just one time but over and over. For someone with arachnophobia, this sounds like a worst nightmare.

…

Another technique, called “decoded neurofeedback,” or DecNef, involves coaxing people to produce brain activity corresponding to a fear without showing them the fear-causing stimulus itself. “We use [functional magnetic resonance imaging] to first figure out patterns of brain activity representing the perception of some animals, such as spiders and snakes,” says Hakwan Lau, a psychologist now at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, who led the team that developed DecNef. “Then we look for occurrences of these patterns while people are still inside the scanner.”

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Scientific American