A 44-year-old woman who doesn’t experience fear has led to the discovery of where that fright factor lives in the human brain.
Researchers put out their best foot to try to scare the patient, who they refer to as “SM” in their write-up in the most recent issue of the journal Current Biology. Haunted houses, where monsters tried to evoke an avoidance reaction, instead evoked curiosity; spiders and snakes didn’t do the trick; and a battery of scary film clips entertained SM.
The patient has a rare condition called Urbach–Wiethe disease that has destroyed her amygdala, the almond-shaped structure located deep in the brain. Over the past 50 years studies have shown the amygdala plays a central role in generating fear responses in various animals from rats to monkeys.
Full article at LiveScience
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I remember a poster in a biology lab I saw ages ago which made reference to the function of the amygdala. It claimed that if you removed it from a monkey and put said monkey in a cage with a lion it would show no fear. It would even remain totally apathetic to danger if the lion started to chew it.
The poster never mentioned how they came to know that’s what the monkey would do and I’m not entirely sure I want to know whether that was a hypothetical or an actual scientific experiment.
But the whole idea of being eaten and just thinking – “meh, looks like I’m being eaten. Bloody typical…” has a kind of perverse appeal.
Halloween must be boring.
Her name is SM: …How convenient
Is it possible to loose a little bit of Amygdala?
My ‘amygdala’ must be massive and always have been. I think it’s probably grown.
A condition of this sort crossed with psychopathy and sociopathy is a lethal manifest.
a female captain kirk!
I wish I was like her. I’m terrified of bodies of water.
the goverment will be thinking of a way to make this happen to spys soon so they dont give into torture…