The freezing response can also help prey animals, like mice, avoid detection by predators. If freezing doesn’t work and they are detected anyway, mice shift to a flight response, where they run and jump away from the threat.
Although many people know of the fight-or-flight response that humans have, there are other instinctive fear responses that humans exhibit, like freezing. This research was done on mice, which have similar fear responses but may respond differently to threatening situations than predators, such as humans. It is entirely likely that the pathways that control these same experiences in the human brain are more complicated.
“There are a lot of differences between the prefrontal cortex of a mouse and a human because, through evolution, our prefrontal cortex has gotten gigantic and much more complex,” said Fadok.