Freud's 1926 conjecture is confirmed: evidence from the dorsal periaqueductal gray in mice that human psychological defense against internal instinctual threat evolved from animal motor defense against external predatory threat.

In their companion study, using the ‘elevated plus maze’ in an approach-avoidance experimental paradigm ( Reis et al., 2021b ), Reis and colleagues have further demonstrated highly significant and equal (slope) correlations between the proportions of time that a given mouse (1) “approaches” the rat and (2) “explores” the riskier exposed open arms of the ‘elevated plus maze,’ indicating that the “approach” and “explore” neuronal ensembles were essentially the same ensembles.

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