What if we had no fear? That we were not scared of anything or anyone. Sounds like an appealing trait to have, but in fact it can be very dangerous to be fearless. Some harmless situations where having no fear would be beneficial include being negatively judged by others, public speaking, and enclosed areas. However, if we had no fear and were in a robbery or in a life and death situation, that is when things can get a little confusing. Normally we would do all that we can to save ourselves and others, but for those people who have damage to their amygdala, show no fear in these types of situations.
I'm sure we all know the responsibilities of the almond shaped structure in our brains known as the amygdala. It's functions include emotional processing and responses, especially in fear and anxiety. If there is damage to the amygdala that person loses all emotional process and response to different stimuli. The amygdala also has an emotional storage or memory that helps us remember what we are afraid of and what makes us happy. So what happens if there is damage to the amygdala? Yes, that person will be fearless and will not remember what their own personal fears are. They will also have problems identifying fear in other people's facial expressions.
While reading the section on 'damage to the human amygdala' the text gave a famous example of a woman known as SM who was indeed fearless of everything. She has a genetic disorder known as Urbach-Wiethe disease which eventually wastes the amygdala with accumulating calcium. This disease has other symptoms and characteristics but we are focusing in on the neurological aspect of it. Here is an article explaining SM's case of this disease and the various situations she was exposed to in testing her amount of fearlessness.
It's crazy knowing one cannot experience fear due to having a damaged amygdala. I am not into horror movies and find them boring, but as I was reading the article, they mention some movies I have cared less to watch. For the researchers to use those movies to scare a person who is fearless to almost everything in the world, then they must be pretty good. Anyhow, I thought this post was pretty interesting and very well explained how one can loose the ability to experience fear. Makes me wonder if I am able to live life like SM.
ReplyDeleteInteresting aspect of not having fear. I thought it would be a delight but upon reading your article I realized it is very dangerous in the way I see it if you weren't afraid of anything like getting in a hit and run then you would die of not having fear, your reflexes wouldn't react if at all to "on coming danger".
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