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Look Out! How Teams of Brain Cells Help Keep Us Safe From Harm

- Lindsay R. Halladay

Imagine you are walking in a park full of brightly colored flowers and some of their greatest admirers—honeybees. Suddenly, you hear the buzzing of a bee very near your ear. Without even thinking about it, your muscles tense up, and you stop dead in your tracks. You find yourself frozen, hoping the bee ignores you and buzzes on by.
What just happened?
Well, one of your brain's most important jobs is keeping you safe. Somewhere in your past, you learned two things: First, bees can sting! And second, bees buzz. So, when your ears perked up at the sound of bees buzzing, alarm bells went off in your brain. Your brain responded by telling your muscles to freeze so that the bee would hopefully just buzz off. And you did not even have to think about it… Pretty cool!
Now imagine something just a little different. You are taking an afternoon stroll through the very same park, but earlier that morning an angry bee stung you in the arm—and it hurt! So now when you hear bees buzzing in the park, will your brain, whose job is to protect you, simply tell your body to freeze in place? Heck no!

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2019.00063

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