Poster

My poster is almost finished all that is needed is the citations.

Essay

The final essay for my project is progressing nicely with my blog actually being a great guideline for the main topics and I find myself often going back to it.

Superpowers in Fear? Final Part

Possibly one of the most iconic super villains they Joker is a man of so many layers one could liken him to an onion.  No one knows for sure who Joker was before he took a swan dive into a vat of ambiguous chemicals that warped his mind, but one thing for certain is that he hasn't looked back.  While Joker is known for his many mind games with the Bat of Gotham he is most known for his iconic Joker Venom.  The gas that forces its victims to die laughing with a smile on their face.
Quite a gruesome way to go.  This could also be linked to the fear state.  The uncontrollable laughing can be chalked up to hysteria a state of extreme excitement, FEAR, and anger with the result being a combination of laughing and crying.  Victims of Joker Venom are known to do both of these things.  However, the main part of the venom is the Glasgow smiles permanently on the faces of the dead.  The result could be linked to a combo of shock and the stress of daily life.  Shock is known to have severe life threatening effects when someone is introduced to a drug their body is not accustomed to, resulting the over stress of muscles and even snapping of the spine.  Prolonged stress is said to have similar effects with the added shock to the body system the muscles could simply snap into a fatal position and leave the victim to die.  Not dissimilar to the disease known as lockjaw.

Superpowers in Fear? Part 2

Today I will be looking into a member of the villain gallery of Gotham who have shown some interest in the power of Fear.  The Scarecrow his very iconic Fear Gas.

Dr. Jonathan Crane later known as The Scarecrow was a professor of psychology who studied the effects of various drugs on members of the Arkham Insane Asylum to see the effects of fear on humans.  He later went on to a life of crime taking his experiments way beyond the realm of moral and started to treat everyone as a test subject for his study in fear and phobias.

The way Dr. Crane creates fear is by his aerosol fear toxin or fear gas.  It causes the victims to see hallucinations of their worst fears come to life.  It is noted that Batman has a cure for the toxin in hand at all times.  Drug-induced hallucinations are not a new idea many kinds of drugs like deliriants and psychedelics that influence the brain also create hallucinations.  For a doctor of psychology who had intimate knowledge of the brain it would not be far fetched for him to create a drug that can affect the amygdala and force the feeling of fear.

Speed Limits of the Human Body

While in my previous post I mention how speed similar to the Flash could be attained through extensive use of the 'fear state', but I must look back to the physical limits of the current human body.  Common limits are known to us in the phrase "three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minuets without air".  While this is not a concrete rule it holds merit for the average Joe whose body is accustomed to regular food, water, and air.    The body has limits their is only so much calcium for the muscles and how fast blood can move oxygen around, even with chemical boosts.

In 2008 Mark Denny a biologist at Stanford University did a study on the absolute limits to speed in animals.  He looked into the race history of horses and greyhounds in the U.S.. Looking all the way back into the turn of the 20th Century he had concluded that the speed had plateaued, with winning times not really moving since the 1970s.  It isn't like horse breeders hadn't tried their hand to create faster horses, but the fact is with the traits the are enhancing the drawbacks increase.  "You can breed a horse to go faster than ever before or to have stronger muscles but then its legs will break."

In terms of humans Usain Bolt -the world's fastest man- holds the world record of 9.58 seconds in the 100 meter dash.  He has beaten his own record a few times before, but on a whole the number of world records being broken is dramatically decreasing over the years and humans start to reach their own plateau of physical ability.  Peter Weyand of Southern Methodist University says that humans still have a way to go before that biological ceiling but the method of getting there is morally ambiguous.

Superpowers in Fear? Part 1

When I started this project I was leading up to this point where I can make logical leaps to understand how superpowers could exist in real people.  My first hero to uncover is Detective Comic's Flash.
 Now Flash has had many revamps over the years and his origin changes around a little each time so I'm going to use the most widely accepted form of his origin and work from there.  Barry Allen was a forensic scientist known for being slow, forgetful, and frequently late for just about everything.  Until the fateful day when he stayed late at the lab only to be struck by a bolt of lightning and dowsed in a cocktail of unnamed chemicals.


This combo gifted him with the power of super speed and he went on to don the scarlet spandex of the hero Flash.  A highly unlikely and shall I say impossible occurrence for any real person to have, but as I have stated before superhuman feats are possible through the hormone control in the brain.

What are the symptoms of fear I have stated before?  The rapid creation of glucose increasing the level of energy the body has on hand to perform tasks.  One of the accepted quirks of the flash is how much food he has to consume in the down time after he is fighting crime.  A 'super' metabolism so to speak.  Possibly of byproduct of a rapid usage of glucose in the fear state to force the body into faster movement.  Flash is also known to heal rapidly from wounds another symptoms of the fear state due to increased blood flow and platelets moving around faster.


Among Flash's other feats it has been noted that his brain is able to function at a much faster level than before the incident.  While not a symptom of the fear state this can possibly be tied back to the lightning bolt.  Nerves run on a series of impulses much like electric the lightning could have possibly done something to the nervous system in Flash's body.

My final point of evidence is I have already spoken of the hormone that creates the fear state, epinephrine.  What is to say that the random assortment of chemicals found in a forensic lab couldn't have created a large release of the hormone epinephrine into the body coupled with the lightning throwing his nerves out of wack the brain could forget to turn the fear response off leaving him in a constant fear state and granting Flash super speed as a side effect.

Food for thought
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Fear in the Media

The media is no longer about just being updated on the state of the world, it is a business, and nothing sells better then fear.  Fear-based news prey on the anxieties of self-safety that activates the fear response also leading the increased probability of depression relapse.  However, with increased capitalism in the news industry the stories need to be bold and controversial to draw in the general public.  As i said before controversy not matter the topic creates fear.

This type of programming follows the hierarchy of 'if it bleeds, it leads'.  Using dramatic anecdotes instead of empirical evidence and fabricating trends of isolated events the media replaces and optimistic view with a fatalistic way of thinking.  Everything is carefully crafted to be a fearful as possible.  

Culture of Fear

While fear -as I have stated before- is an inherently positive emotion and an easy emotion to create or mimic it leaves itself easily open to manipulation.  This leads me to what is known today as the "Culture of Fear" meaning that people create the idea of fear to control the general public.  A fear culutre is seen most commonly in politics the media and the workplace.  For example in the workplace "petty tyrants" leaders who use a tyrannical style of management create a fear climate.  Along with continued negative reinforcement leaves many in a permanent state of anxiety and will cause people to react differently then if they were calm and going about their lives, more often then not actually leaving the workplace.

For politics and example is seen during the political repression in Brazil since 1964 as a climate of fear was created to force the people into a tense calm at the threat of arrest or torture.  This along with other methods took the country into a stranglehold of control.  The fear was created through three factors silence through censorship, sense of isolation, and a general belief that all opposition was gone.   The fear culture that holds the US is said to have began with 9/11, but that is just not true any form of controversy no matter if their is evidence or not will cause fear to erupt through the simple mechanism of safety to self.

Time at the Hospital

For the past few weeks in Surgery Waiting at the Hospital not much has occurred.  The paperwork was done on time, patients came and went, poor handwriting was puzzled over like Sanskrit.  Each day was pretty much the same, until this week.  One of the tasks we have at the Surgery Waiting desk is to catalog all of the people coming and going from the Intensive Care Unit.  No one in my knowledge has come up until now (we are not a ICU heavy hospital).  A whole family rushed up frantic and even had a priest with them.  They wished to give their loved one their last rites.  I was calm and had someone stay behind to fill out the paperwork while a call was sent back to ICU to confirm the patient was there and could see visitors.  The whole family unit had to take turns to see their family in groups of three.  It was all very tense as the mood bled into the rest of the waiting room.  Eventually these people left and the mood returned to placidity.  But it was quite terrifying how that aura of fear was able to visibly control those who were not even involved.

Stress and Fear

I may have made some comparisons between stress and fear in earlier posts, and it is true that the two overlap quite a great deal.  Fear as whole is a more short term reaction to immediate threats and stress/anxiety are more long term reactions to perceived threats.  Many of the symptoms of stress are similar to those of fear, just in a lesser intensity (meaning no shock can occur).  

Increased muscles tension (to help with rapid movement) is a major symptom of fear, however, in the case of stress the muscles are in a constant state of tensions straining the muscles and bones leaving an almost constant sensation of pain.  The heart is another major organ that reacts to the 'fear state' by increasing the blood flow through the body, pushing the heart into working overtime.  This is also an effect of stress that could lead to hypertension, stroke, or even a heart attack.  The hormones released are the same for both fear and stress these are what trigger the increase in glucose production in the 'fear state'.  However when stress is not fear and the body doesn't use this massive amount of glucose it could cause major problems even leading to diabetes.  And those individuals who already have diabetes are at even greater risk.  Not major problem is found in the nervous system but the constant signaling of the other organs to perform these tasks leads to continued pain for the body.

Adrenaline

The phrase 'rush of adrenaline' is common in action movies and stuntmen.  But what is a adrenaline really?  Adrenaline is the hormone and neurotransmitter also known as epinephrine.  Hormones are used to quickly pass messages to organs in the body en masse, it is controlled by the endocrine system.  Epinephrine in particular is a major factor in the 'fight or flight' response.  It's response is to increase blood flow to muscles, output of heart, pupil dilation, and blood sugar.  All symptoms of the body response to fear.  It does this by effecting the alpha and beta receptors.

Alpha receptors have several common effects such as vasoconstriction of veins and decreasing motility of smooth muscle in intestines.  Specific vessels that are targeted in fear are the skin, gastrointestinal system, kidney's and brain.  They also are the reason behind contractions in pregnancy.  Beta receptors are more commonly used in relaxing smooth tissue rather then heightened tension in alpha receptors, but they also increase cardiac output (heart rate, conduction velocity, stroke volume).

As epinephrine controls a great deal of the body when forcing it into a high activity state it can also be used to a beneficial medical way.  It can be used to treat cardiac arrest with its control over beta receptors, asthma - alpha, croup - alpha.  Side effects due include a state of anxiety as the body is forced into and artificial 'fear state', but the benefits outweigh the costs.

Shock

Shock is a byproduct of lack of blood circulating through the body.  Many different problems can cause shock but the most well known is the fear response.  As I have said before one of the first reactions to the body moving into the 'fear state' is increased blood flow and moving blood away from non-essential areas.  Areas like extremities (hands and feet).  This is formally known as vasoconstriction with a narrowing of the blood vessels resulting in a lack of blood circulating.  What the body is trying to do is force the creation of adrenaline hormones, 'shocking' the body into action.

So all in all shock like fear is ultimately a defense mechanism, but this form comes with some nasty side effects.  It is actually a life-threatening emergency sometimes resulting in uncontrolled bleeding, severe burns and spinal injury.  Every person reacts differently to rapid influx of hormones into their system.  Some take it extremely poorly and the body can't handle the sudden change of internal environment.  This along with the 'fear state' already in effect leaving their immune system compromised results in a backlash of fatal proportions.

Superhuman feats

People often mention offhand of a loving mother lifting a car of her baby.  It's the power of family!  Nothing can keep a lioness from her cub!  This is both true and false.  The body and mentality of someone can very well release limiters that cause superhuman feats, but it's not only the power of motherly love that can do this.

As I have said before when the body goes into a 'fear state' it shuts down all non-essential systems of body function and focuses on both faster healing of wounds and increasing energy available for muscles to use.  Reflex arcs are also known to be more active in these situations.  Allowing the body to move and react at peak form something that is just not physically possible in an everyday situation.
An example of this is when Tom Boyle Jr. at about 8:30 PM on a summer evening in Tucson saw the Comaro in front of him skid and hit a bike.  For a few seconds the Comaro kept going dragging the bike and it's rider 18-year-old Kyle Holtrust.  One of Kyle's legs became jammed under the car and couldn't be moved.  Boyle rushed over and started to lift the car, he was able to hold to car enough for Kyle to pull his leg free (about 45 seconds).  Boyle was six foot four, 280 pounds and lifted a Comaro weighing 3,000 pounds beating the world record by just under 2,000 pounds.  This is the power of fear.

Automatic Body Response

Automatic body responses or reflexes as they are commonly known as are involuntary and near instantaneous movement in response to stimulus.  Reflexes can be grouped into categories such as conditioned, primitive, stretch, or cranial.  Each type named for the either the part of the body they effect or how they are obtained.  For example, stretch reflexes generally have to do with the peripheral nervous system moving muscles.  A conditioned reflex on the other hand is something that can be "taught" to to person or animal through continued stimulus.

The body reacts to stimuli through an exchange of information from the peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system where the brain connects the stimulus to an appropriate action.  Then this information is transmitted again to the peripheral nervous system to act on the decision.  This whole process while much too fast to compare to the macro movement of the body is still too slow when in the perspective of fear and actual danger.  So that's when reflexes are triggered.  Reflexes are essentially the peripheral nervous system overriding the controls and acting when certain stimuli interact with it.  This is known as a "reflex arc".  A reflex arc is when the two types of neurons found in the body act independently of each other one (interneuron) reports to the spine and brain while the other (motor neuron) is already triggering a response.  Allowing the body to move away from danger quickly while still informing the brain.

Basics of the Nervous System

The nervous system is like an old phone operator working at light speed with no breaks, ever.  It works to connect parts of the body to each other and relay information through specialized nerve cells.

The nervous system is sub-divided down depending on conscious or unconscious functions of affected areas of the body.  Initially it is divided into the Central and Peripheral nervous systems.  The central consisting of the brain and spinal cord.  It contain the majority of the nervous system and only has one direct contact with the outside environment (olfactory epithelium).  The Peripheral system contains all the nerves not associated with brain or spinal cord they are almost always in contact with the outside environment and work to communicate with the brain and spine to the rest of the body.

How the Biology Works

So while fear is kick-started with the brain reacting to a threat how does it exert it's control over the rest of the body?  The answer is primarily hormones.  When the brain recognizes something frightening enough the pituitary gland starts activating.  From there a cascade of hormones run straight through the body to confront (or run away) from this problems.  These hormones are able to pass through the body so well because they are lipid soluble meaning that they just move through the cell wall will little to no resistance to react their reactors.  An effective method for an almost instantaneous body reaction.  

The body starts moving in the 'fear state' which includes increased blood pressure, blood sugar, and suppression of the immune system.

 All of this jump starts with the creation of glucose dramatically increasing the body's available energy.  This extra energy is what the body uses to fight or flight at an increased rate then what is normally available for a person.  Increased blood flow to the muscles is activated and diverts blood away from non-essential systems.  High blood sugar is the blood moving glucose and fats to gain energy.  Blood clotting is moved into high gear to prevent excessive blood loss in the event of an injury.  Finally, increased muscle tension provides extra speed and strength.

In layman's terms the body is diverting all it's attention away from systems like the immune system that are not immediately needed to save the body an trying to boost the places that can save it.  Really quite smart and thinking in three dimensions.

That Tight Feeling in Your Chest

Imagine this you're standing just outside the largest most important thing in your life.  Let that be a job interview, restaurant to propose to your partner, the gym on AP week.  You're heart beats fast, sweat appears, the tightness in your chest makes it harder to breathe.  Have you ever wondered why these things occur?  Is it your body telling you do not do this thing for death will come, as a sort of defense mechanism.

Well don't get your hopes up because it's not any of that.  All these symptoms are a byproduct of the mind's overreaction to stress, commonly known as anxiety.  Basically the mind is overriding the body functions as it starts to imagine that the result of the next action will result in a termination of self, or death.  A blank bullet to make a comparison, the sound of it is loud and terrifying but nothing will actually happen.  Sad how the complex organ that is the brain takes advantage over the best automatic survival mechanism human's have.  We all must make sacrifices for higher mental functions.

The amount stress people have is varied but the American Psychological Association has found that about 25% of Americans are experiencing high levels of stress (rating their stress level as 8 or more on a 10-point scale), while another 50% report moderate levels of stress (a score of 4 to 7 ).  That's a lot of false positives.  In modern America this can be tied to the newborn "fear culture".  There has been a lot of debate on whether a person can have a personality tied to high anxiety, but results are hard to come by with the rampant expansion of media.  With so much coverage in the day-to-day on horrific events or the worst possible conclusion people are influenced to have a glass half-empty mentality.

In conclusion, don't worry too much, it ruins your response to true fear.

Training in a Stress Heavy Environment

My internship/volunteering experience has concluded my training at the front desk today.  The training involved a lot of interaction with all kinds of people in various states of distress.  I often found myself becoming anxious or fearful when those I was suppose to help became worked up.  Going forward with my project on anxiety vs. fear I will be using my experience at the hospital to design an experiment to attempt to measure a person's anxiety when confronted with various stimuli.  As true fear is based on present danger the stimuli will try to simulate a perceived danger without any actual harm being done.   An example of one of the trials is that I will have someone look for a cellphone in a messy room.  The first time with no outside stimuli just with an instruction to look.  The second with a timer, third with a timer and the phone ringing, and finally the last trail will include a person frantically looking for the same phone.

My hope is that will this kind of experiment I would be able to see the different stimuli in action to change a person into a hyper aware state.  A heart rate test will be done before and after each trail to study change.

Fear as an Emotion

Fear is inherently a positive emotion.  Not in the sense that it creates a whole lot good vibes that allow's someone to be content, but in the sense that it keeps people alive.  When people commonly think about fear it is always in a negative light.  For example, I have a 'fear' of heights so I can't ride the roller coaster.  But common phobia's even in the most severe of cases are not fear's at all, they are all forms of anxiety disorders.

With the goal of my project focused around extreme fear in the environment I needed to look into what true fear was and it's differences from common anxiety.  Fear in a nutshell in the body's reaction to an immediate perceived danger.  It's almost involuntary, as the body will react regardless of how safe a person's previous mindset was.  In contrast with phobia's, people will agonize over the cause of their anxiety and mental stress will build up, but the biological fear response of hyperactivity will not kick in to 'save the body' from danger.  The fear response is commonly known as the 'fight-or-flight' response.  Where the body having perceived a clear and present danger will enter a state of hyperactivity in an attempt to preserve the system's life.  However, over the years it has been noted that along with fight and flight, fright and freeze are also reactions, but these are reacting to lesser dangers.   PTSD is one of the few examples of fear without a present danger it is the memory of fear causing the body to react in the same way.

When it comes down to it fear is an ancient survival mechanism that has survived into present-day.  I would like to think my ultimate survival and biologically enhanced ability to make decisions under pressure would be a positive emotion to keep.  The superhuman strength doesn't hurt either.

Introduction - Online Training

Hello,

I am Lucy and on this blog I will be detailing the steps of my research towards the barrier of extreme stress required for average humans to achieve superhuman feats.  

Currently in the first week of the project I have finalized my off-site training for my volunteer work at HonorHealth Hospital on Pinnacle Peak. A lot goes into actually obtaining even a volunteer position at the hospital it was required for me to get two TB tests and a flu shot. A TB or Tuberculosis skin test in an injection under the skin to check if a person has ever been exposed to tuberculosis. The test is done by putting a small amount of TB protein under the top layer of skin on the inner forearm. If the person had ever been exposed to the TB bacteria, their skin will react to the antigens by developing a firm red bump at the site within 2 days. While the test doesn't tell any specifics on whether a person currently has tuberculosis or how long since they had it a hospital full of immunocompromised individuals doesn't want to take any chances.

Along with these injections I have had to perform several hours of online training. This training has been mostly centered around HIPAA or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA is a wide reaching act that protects the privacy of every patient at the hospital. It has very strict guidelines on who had the information of the patient and how that information can be moved around in every circumstance.

However, beyond HIPAA and the other legal details that accompany medical care online training stressed a single important detail. The patient means everything. I should do everything in my power stated and unstated to ensure a pleasant experience for the patient at the hospital. A major part of that is the removal of fear from the environment. I shall be looking more into that topic in the following days as my on-site training begins.

https://www.honorhealth.com/