Psychology researchers unravel phobic disorders using one not-so-itsy-bitsy spider

From needles, snakes and airplanes to test-taking, speech-making and germs, sources of all-encompassing panic can make pushing through daily life feel like more trouble than it’s worth.

The pounding heartbeats, looming dread and debilitating tremors can lead many with phobias and anxiety disorders to seek methods of treatment. But if medications, one-on-one counseling and avenues of self-care are not yielding the desired results, could the answer to effective phobic disorder treatment lie beneath the surface of the psyche and deeper inside the mind?

One research team in NAU’s Department of Psychological Sciences is attempting to demonstrate just that. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology to measure electrical brain activity, a team of 16 undergraduate research assistants led by professor Larry Stevens and student lab managers Skylar Wilcoxson and Annalene Thompson aims to train study participants to beat a fear as old as time and as creepy as it is crawly: arachnophobia.

Meeting of the minds

Neurofeedback, also known as neuroregulation or neurotherapy, is a form of noninvasive psychological treatment that involves a thorough analysis of a patient’s brain activity. By explaining the intricacies of the brain’s regions, one called the anxiety neural network, and their functions to the patient, psychologists can train them to self-regulate their brain waves and quell their symptoms.

Wilcoxson began studying neurofeedback in 2017 while he was still active in the Navy, a status that later allowed this study to qualify for a Student Veteran Research Opportunity grant. Since then, his passion for neurofeedback therapy has sent him on a mission to prove its efficacy.

He joined forces with Stevens in the fall to design a study that takes 30 arachnophobes through six sessions of neurotherapy and records its effects on their anxiety neural networks, building and training a team of undergraduate research assistants in the process. As of March, nine participants have fully completed the study.

“With only six sessions, we’re seeing statistically significant changes,” Wilcoxson said. “We want to use that evidence to show that neurofeedback can apply to a range of situations. It’s really going to open the door for clinicians who are doing neurofeedback to look at what we’ve done and use it to treat different phobic and anxiety disorders.”

It’s all in your head

After scoring high on a standard arachnophobia questionnaire, spider-phobes of all shapes and sizes start the study process by visiting the team’s lab on the third floor of NAU’s Student Academic Services building.

In the participant recording room, researchers strap an electrode cap onto the participant’s head and measure their brain activity in multiple scenarios: first, while they’re looking at the wall to collect a baseline reading, and second, with a certain eight-legged someone in their periphery.

The team’s tarantula, lovingly nicknamed Spidey, lives in an onsite enclosure. During the test, however, a research assistant will handle Spidey eerily close to the participant, sending a jolt through their anxiety neural network.

This test, known as quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG), provides an almost instantaneous play-by-play of the mind’s operations.

“EEGs have progressed amazingly over the last decade,” Stevens said. “There’s a real advantage to them because we can do MRI-quality imaging that’s not only faster but spatially the same as an MRI. MRIs rely on blood flow while EEGs rely on electrons, which are faster than blood. We can capture changes over thousandths of a second with an EEG, whereas with an MRI, it’s more like a minute or two because blood flows so, so slowly.”

Neurotherapy has been studied extensively as a potential cognitive treatment, but these studies typically record results after a subject has completed dozens of treatment sessions. This study’s revolutionary ability to rely on six sessions is in part due to its method of data collection.

Instead of using one, two or four electrodes to monitor brain activity like most clinicians and researchers, this team is using 19.

“Using just one or two electrodes is just recording from the surface, and we can’t see what’s going on in the brain with that,” Stevens said. “But using 19, we can use very sophisticated mathematical algorithms to triangulate and identify sites deep within the brain that are the source of the surface activity.”

Getting the green light

Once the initial assessments have concluded, study participants graduate to their personalized neurotherapy sessions, which they complete over two weeks.

A monitor within the participant recording room shows them their live brain activity via a 3D model of their head, once again gathering data from a QEEG. This model is equipped with a critical anxiety marker that research assistants simply call the “green dot.”

When a green dot is present on the monitor, the power of the participant’s anxiety neural network is lower, signaling the participant is relaxed. The moment the network is activated, the green dot disappears, and research assistants work with the participant to discover what triggered the change and what thoughts, ideas or actions can return them to a state of bliss.

Over time, the mental threshold that study participants use to earn the green dot increases, training them to become increasingly in tune with their anxiety symptoms and the avenues of self-soothing that work for them.

“Imagine trying to incite a specific mental state and being rewarded for getting there,” Wilcoxson said. “That’s what that green dot is really doing. Every time you’re feeling relaxed and calm, you get rewarded through that conditioning.”

Clinician coaches, like junior psychology major Hope Kalvelage, have seen a range of effective solutions for arachnophobes in the recording room, from taking a minute to space out to dreaming about pancakes.

While many avenues of therapy require patients to unpack the often-traumatic sources of their anxieties, treatments like neurotherapy can offer an alternative for individuals who prefer a faster, less invasive way to make the symptoms go away.

“There are many different ways two different people with similar mental health issues, conditions or diagnoses can receive treatment,” Kalvelage said. “One treatment might be effective for one person, and it might not be effective for the other. One of the important things we’re doing in this study is researching an avenue that can be used by someone who has tried everything else. All the other treatments they found might not work, but maybe neurofeedback does.”

The study concludes with a final QEEG assessment that gauges how the participant’s response to nearby spiders has evolved. Although the study has only just begun and the group expects to formally compile its results in the summer at the earliest, Stevens said the group is already starting to see some promising data in favor of neurotherapy.

But until they can say for certain, these researchers will continue to unravel the tangled web of the phobic mind with the help of Spidey, their cricket-eating companion.