And Kaede’s hydroponic garden? It became a metaphor — not just a tower of thriving greens but a living lesson in neuroscience: fear is temporary when curiosity and understanding take root.… Kaede was a cognitive neuroscientist who had spent years studying how the brain responds to uncertainty. She knew the science well: when people face something truly new, the amygdala — the brain’s threat detector — lights up, releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This is natural. But what most people didn’t realize was how that initial fear isn’t a direct reaction to danger — it’s the brain’s protest against not knowing. It’s the nervous system begging for familiarity. Kaede often quoted a phrase she coined in her lectures: “Fear of newness is stress caused by the urge to become familiar with something new being blocked.” In her lab at Sakura City University, she studied a unique approach called predictive processing theory — t...