HKU psychology research decodes real-life fear

Paving way for precision social anxiety treatments

The University of Hong Kong

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Researchers at HKU have unveiled a transformative approach to understanding and treating social anxiety, challenging decades of laboratory-based assumptions and opening doors to targeted therapies.

view more 

Credit: The University of Hong Kong

Researchers at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) have unveiled a transformative approach to understanding and treating social anxiety, challenging decades of laboratory-based assumptions and opening doors to targeted therapies. By developing an AI-driven brain model that accurately captures fear in real-world scenarios, the discovery offers new hope to millions affected by disorders such as social phobia and autism, while paving the way for clinical interventions using innovative tools.

Fear is a natural survival instinct, but for many, it can become a debilitating condition like social anxiety. A fundamental challenge in treating such disorders is that traditional laboratory studies of fear fail to capture how the emotion is experienced in dynamic, real-world situations.

In two recent studies, a research team led by Professor Benjamin Becker from the Department of Psychology at HKU has made a significant breakthrough. The team first revealed that existing brain models of fear, developed using static images in labs, do not reliably track fear responses during real-life experiences, such as watching a scary movie. To overcome this, they developed an advanced AI-inspired brain model that can precisely track the conscious experience of fear in these dynamic, naturalistic situations.

Building on this innovation, the researchers used the new model to test the effects of the hormone oxytocin. The findings showed that oxytocin specifically reduces both the subjective feeling of fear and its corresponding neural signature in social contexts, but not in non-social ones. This suggests a highly targeted mechanism for alleviating social fear.

Key implications of the research:

• Challenges the validity of hundreds of previous laboratory studies, showing they may not accurately describe how the brain processes fear in daily life.
• Provides compelling evidence for a new, targeted treatment approach for disorders marked by excessive social fear, such as social anxiety, social phobia, and autism.
• Creates a powerful new AI-driven tool for bridging the gap between lab research and real-life emotional experiences, paving the way for more effective clinical interventions.

The studies were published in the leading journals IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing and Advanced Science.

Links to the papers:

1. https://xplorestaging.ieee.org/document/11214282
2. https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202503251

Media enquiries:
Professor Benjamin Becker, Department of Psychology, HKU (Tel: 3917 5097; Email: bbecker@hku.hk)
Miss Michelle Tsang (Cantonese inquiries), Department of Psychology, HKU (Tel: 3917 7126; Email: tsanghlm@connect.hku.hk)
Miss Kay Teng (Mandarin inquiries), Department of Psychology, HKU (Tel: 3917 7126; Email: yuekayteng@connect.hku.hk)

---

Journal

Advanced Science

DOI

10.1002/advs.202503251 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Oxytocin Reduces Subjective Fear in Naturalistic Social Contexts via Enhancing Top-Down Middle Cingulate Amygdala Regulation and Brain-Wide Fear Representations

 

Ateneo, Manila Observatory track down elusive rain-triggering ‘shear lines’

Ateneo de Manila University

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

This HIMAWARI8 satellite image for January 16, 2017, shows cold cloud tops and deep convection attributed to a shear line, indicated by the white dotted line. Shear lines account for up to 20% of extreme rainfall days during the Philippine northeast monsoon season from November to February.

view more 

Credit: Olaguera et al., 2025

Much of the heavy rains that hit the Philippines during the Amihan northeast monsoon season between November and March are triggered by “shear lines”: kilometers-long bands of converging warm and cold air that are constantly shifting and difficult to spot even via satellite. 

This HIMAWARI8 satellite image for January 16, 2017, shows cold cloud tops and deep convection attributed to a shear line, indicated by the white dotted line. Shear lines account for up to 20% of extreme rainfall days during the Philippine northeast monsoon season from November to February. SOURCE: Olaguera et al., 2025.

“Our study is the first to develop an objective index for monitoring and detecting shear lines over the Philippines,” said lead researcher Lyndon Mark P. Olaguera. “There are no universally-accepted thresholds or criteria for detecting shear lines, unlike cold fronts or Tropical Cyclones; these systems form from cold fronts that lose their well-defined structure when they pass over the warm waters of the ocean.”

Researchers from the Ateneo de Manila University, the Manila Observatory, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) looked at decades’ worth of weather data, including a particularly extreme rainfall event in 2017 that was   attributed to shear lines. They then looked at common weather characteristics—such as wind patterns, temperature, and moisture—that could be used to quickly spot these elusive weather phenomena, and serve as the bases for the detection algorithm.

They said that this detection method is useful for quantifying the contribution of shear lines to rainfall extremes during the northeast monsoon season in the Philippines; for identifying areas that are more likely to experience heavy to extreme rainfall events; and for improving scientists’ understanding of how this weather system evolves.

“The primary application of the algorithm is in weather forecasting and the development of early warning systems, but it can also be applied to climatological studies; the verification of numerical models, for example, assessing whether existing mathematical models can capture shear lines; the improvement of numerical weather prediction parameterizations, such as adjusting physical schemes if shear lines are not well represented; and the validation of forecast system performance,” Olaguera explained.

This work marks groundbreaking progress towards improving the Philippines’ weather monitoring and forecasting capabilities; the authors recommend further research to identify additional criteria for improving shear line detection.

Lyndon Mark P. Olaguera, John A. Manalo, Jun Matsumoto, Faye Abigail T. Cruz, and Jose Ramon T. Villarin published their study, An Objective Method to Locate Shear Lines during the Northeast Monsoon Season in the Philippines, in the Meteorological Society of Japan’s Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere (SOLA) in November 2025.

---

DOI

10.2151/sola.21C-003 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Article Title

An Objective Method to Locate Shear Lines during the Northeast Monsoon Season in the Philippines

 

Study: ‘Self-activation’ is part of the success strategy of parasitic weeds

Parasitic plants activate feeding organs before they attach to a host / Possible new approach to weed control

University of Münster

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

To eventually release thousands of tiny seeds, branched broomrape (Phelipanche ramosa), the model species used in this study, forms branching, non-green flowering shoots after about two months of development on the roots of an oilseed rape plant (in the background).

view more 

Credit: Susann Wicke

Parasitic weeds extract water and nutrients from their host plants. But what makes these parasites so successful? A team led by Prof Susann Wicke from the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity at the University of Münster has now investigated how certain parasitic plants develop their feeding organs (haustoria), which they use to attach themselves to the roots of other plants and extract nutrients from them. The researchers found that the parasites already produce various substances in their seeds and release them. In this way, they trigger the development of their haustoria even without a host. This allows the young parasites to reach a state very early on in which they can attach themselves to a host plant particularly quickly and effectively. This ‘self-activation’ of the parasitic feeding organ increases their ability to successfully infest the host – a key factor that explains why these weeds are so difficult to control in agriculture.

The researchers observed this phenomenon in three species of parasitic plants of the broomrape family that infest oilseeds, field beans, rice or maize plants, for example, and can cause significant yield losses. These include species that live entirely off their hosts and others that are partially independent after a period of complete dependence below-ground. All of them showed independent pre-activation of their haustoria, albeit to varying degrees. According to Susann Wicke, the ‘study indicates that this mechanism may be more widespread than previously assumed.’ The results triggered a fundamental change in the previous understanding of parasitic plants. For a long time, it was widely believed that these pests only begin to develop their haustoria when a host secretes specific growth factors.

The finding that parasitic plants initiate key developmental processes autonomously, i.e. by themselves, and at very early stages opens new avenues for parasitic weed management. For example, it may become feasible to target the parasite’s own signalling molecules that trigger haustorium formation or to interfere with the early activation of haustorium-associated genes.

The study further demonstrates that distinct classes of compounds can exert substantially stronger effects on haustorial development when acting in combination than when applied individually, and that specific parasitic genes are activated at precise developmental points in time – including those required for establishing vascular continuity through which the parasite ultimately acquires water and nutrients from its host. Moreover, seeds of other plant species – whether they are hosts or non-hosts – release compounds that amplify this self-activation process. This highlights overall seed density in infested soils as a previously underappreciated ecological factor that may influence parasite establishment and could be exploited in future control strategies.

The researchers combined germination and growth experiments under strictly controlled conditions with various microscopy techniques to directly observe the development of the young parasitic plants. To determine the dissolved substances, the researchers used a particularly sensitive analysis method (UHPLC-MS/MS), which allowed them to precisely measure tiny amounts of different molecules. In addition, they recorded which genes are switched on in the cells at precisely determined points in time and control the development processes.

The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Vienna (Austria).

---

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aea1449 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Seed metabolites headstart haustoriogenesis and potentiate aggressiveness of parasitic weeds

Article Publication Date

10-Dec-2025

 

Plant hormone allows lifelong control of proteins in living animal for first time

The advance can help unravel the molecular underpinnings of ageing and disease in model organisms

Center for Genomic Regulation

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Image of five Caenorhabditis elegans taken at the Centre for Genomic Regulation’s research labs.

view more 

Credit: Jeremy Vicencio/Centro de Regulación Genómica

Researchers have found a way to control protein levels inside different tissues of a whole, living animal for the first time. The method lets scientists dial protein levels up or down with great precision during the animal’s entire life, a technological advance which can help them study the molecular underpinnings of ageing and disease.

Scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona and the University of Cambridge successfully tested the technique by controlling how much protein was present in the intestines and neurons of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Their findings are described today in the journal Nature Communications.

The study paves the way for designing completely new experiments that were impossible to carry out with current techniques, like understanding how much of a protein is needed to maintain good health, or tracing how small perturbations to a protein in one tissue can ripple across the whole body. 

“No protein acts alone. Our new approach lets us study how multiple proteins in different tissues cooperate to control how the body functions and ages,” says Dr. Nicholas Stroustrup, researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation and senior author of the paper. 

The new method will have particularly important implications for studying whole-body, systemic processes like ageing, which are shaped by constant interactions between different organs. If a protein affects lifespan in different ways across different body parts, traditional methods can’t always separate those effects using typical on/off experiments with genes. 

This lack of precise, lifelong, tissue-by-tissue control has made it difficult to understand how different parts of our body drive ageing, how they talk to each other and how subtle molecular changes ripple through the entire organism over time. According to the authors of the study, what’s also been missing until now is finesse and calibration. 

“To unpick nuance in biology, sometimes you need half the concentration of a protein here and a quarter there, but all we’ve had up till now are techniques focused on wiping a protein out. We wanted to be able to control proteins like you turn the volume up or down on a TV, and now we can now ask all sorts of new questions,” explains Dr. Stroustrup. 

The technique is an adaptation of existing technology which originates from plant biology. Plants use a hormone called auxin to control growth. Researchers working with yeast created a popular lab tool known as the auxin-inducible degron system, also known as the AID system. 

It works by tagging a protein with a tag, also known as a degron. An enzyme called TIR1 recognises the degron and destroys the protein, but only when auxin is present. Remove the plant hormone and the protein comes back. Since its discovery, the AID system has become a widely used tool in cells and model organisms for rapid, reversible protein control. 

Now, by engineering different versions of the TIR1 enzyme and degrons and testing them across more than one hundred thousand nematodes, the researchers have created a newer, more flexible version which they call a “dual-channel” AID system.  

Rather than switching proteins on or off, the technique allows scientists to control how much of a protein remains, where in the body it is controlled and when the change happens. All this while the animal continues to live normally: eating, moving and growing as the system quietly adjusts protein levels inside the tissues of its body. 

The new technique works by attaching to the end of the target protein a degron tag and then genetically engineering worms to produce a TIR1 enzyme in specific tissues only. When the worms are fed auxin-containing food, the plant hormone activates TIR1, which recognises the degron tag and tells the cell to remove just the right amount of that protein. 

The important innovation was combining two different TIR1 enzymes, each triggered by a different auxin compound. By placing them in different tissues, they could independently control the same protein in the worm’s intestine and in its neurons or even control two different proteins at the same time.  

The researchers also overcame another hurdle, which is that AID systems often fail to work in reproductive tissues. The team traced this to a biological process in the germline and adapted their new system to get around it, creating a tool that works across the whole body, including reproductive cells.

"Getting this to work was quite an engineering challenge. We had to test different combinations of synthetic switches to find the perfect pair that didn't interfere with one another. Now that we've cracked it, we can control two separate proteins simultaneously with incredible precision. It's a powerful tool that we hope will open up new possibilities for biologists everywhere,” concludes Dr. Jeremy Vicencio, postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation and coauthor of the study. 

---

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-66347-x