The above mentioned theories suggest that animals have two prototypical reactions to the intrusions and threat. The first is the frantic attack on or retreat from the enemy, as fight or flight response represents. The second is to get freezed up and immobilized, as described in the tonic immobility. The first accompanies emotional response and autonomic excitation. The most typical example is flashbacks of PTSD, but so-called culture-bound syndromes can also be good examples.
Culture-bound syndromes are found in many different areas of the world. Latah, Amok, Imu, etc are among many of them. In any of these cases, affected people show sudden unusual frantic behaviors upon some triggers. In amok, for example, a male who has shown no previous sign of anger or violence grabs a weapon in a sudden frenzy, and attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters. Usually behaviors subside after a while and the man typically cannot remember his behaviors. In Imu’s case, usually a prudent woman gets suddenly ballistic toward people who happen to be around when they hear words considered to be taboo for the Ainu (indigenous people in northern Japan) society, such as “bikki” (frog) or “tokkoni” (viper). Increased startle, echolalia, echopraxia may also be observed.
The second prototype is often seen among trauma victims. At the moment of trauma, some of them cannot move although they are very aware that they need to escape or protect themselves. They might have out of body experiences during the traumatization. One of my female fellow clinicians had a history of being sexually assaulted in her adolescence. She was very ashamed that she got freezed up and could not do anything during the attack. She then learned aikido to develop her skill of self-defense just in case that similar attack might occur again. Unfortunately she was sexually attacked again, this time by one of her teen age male patient. Although she was then a black belt holder of aikido, she got totally immobilized again. Some says that this type of immobility is related to peritraumatic dissociation (see Chapter 4) which predicts future occurrence of PTSD（Rocha-Rego, et al, 2009）.
Rocha-Rego, V., Fiszman, A., Portugal, L. et al. (2009) Is tonic immobility the core sign among conventional peritraumatic signs and symptoms listed for PTSD? Journal of Affective Disorders, 115; 269-273.
By the way, these two prototypes of reaction to intrusion and threat have been proposed by Bremner et al. (1999). He classified reaction to trauma into “hypervigilance /flashbacks/ reexperiencing” and “dissociation”. The former belongs to the first prototype and the latter to the second, obviously.
Bremner’s classification was then inherited by Lanius (2007) and Nijenhuis, et al (2007) . Lanius indicated, using brain imaging technique, that each reaction corresponds to different physiological state. In the former state, pulse rate and the activity of amygdala is also increased while the activities of hypothalamus, anterior cingulate, medial prefrontal lobe are decreased. In the latter state, there are increased activities in tempral lobe, parieto-occipital lobes, anterior cingulate, medial prefrontal area, and insula.
Bremner, J.D. (1999) Acute and chronic responses to psychological trauma. Where do we go from here? Am J Psychiatry, 156;349-351.
Lanius, R., Bluhm, R., Lanius, U.(2007) Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Provocation and Neuroimaging. Heterogeneity of Response. In Eric Vermetten E, Dorahy MJ, Spiegel (Ed.) D, M.D. Arlington, Va., American Psychiatric Publishing, Washington D.C.
Nijenhuis, E., Den Boer, J.A. (2007) Psychobiology of Traumatization and Trauma-related Structural Dissociation of the Personality. In Eric Vermetten E, Dorahy MJ, Spiegel (Ed.) D, M.D. Arlington, Va., American Psychiatric Publishing, Washington DC., 2007.
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