Primates are distinguished from other mammals by their heavy reliance on the visual sense,
which occurred as a result of natural selection continually favoring those individuals whose …

Since statement that the vast majority of phobias are about objects essential to the survival
of a species, a multitude of laboratory studies followed, supporting the finding that humans …

Emotionally salient objects activate the survival circuits of the brain and are given priority in
cognitive processing, even at the cost of inhibiting ongoing activities. These circuits arouse …

Simple Summary In animal phobia research, one of the most attractive topics has been
arachnophobia—the specific phobia of spiders. In this study, we explore the apparent …

Studies of event-related potentials in humans have established larger early posterior
negativity (EPN) in response to pictures depicting snakes than to pictures depicting other …

Human visual attention is biased to rapidly detect threats in the environment so that our
nervous system can initiate quick reactions. The processes underlying threat detection (and …

Numerous studies have demonstrated that attention is quickly oriented towards threatening
stimuli, and that this attentional bias is difficult to inhibit. The root cause (s) of this bias may …

Evolutionary threats (ETs), such as predatory animals and heights, elicit stronger fear
responses and are more often the subject of specific phobias, as compared to modern …

Predatory snakes are argued to have been largely responsible for the origin of primates via
selection favoring expansion of the primate visual system, and even today snakes can be …

Spiders are among the animals evoking the highest fear and disgust and such a complex
response might have been formed throughout human evolution. Ironically, most spiders do …