By Lynette Cornell
A middle-aged woman with no concept of fear has helped scientists learn more about how the brain not only perceives the fear of others but responds to fear-inducing stimuli itself. The study involved testing the woman by exposing her to scary stimuli and recording her responses; she showed she can feel upset or angry but not fearful. The discovery of her absence of fear, published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, holds great promise for many potential applications in managing fear, ranging from military to clinical uses.
Take the overwhelming numbers of veterans returning with trauma-related psychological issues and add to that the countless numbers of people, diagnosed and not, who struggle with debilitating anxieties, phobias and social interaction disorders. Now, imagine silencing the body’s fear response so that the perceived yet imaginary threats cease to have a physical or psychological affect.
To be practical, fear does have its place. With varying levels of success, it keeps us from doing stupid, life-threatening things and adds an adrenaline-surging aspect of thrill to relatively safe amusement park rides. But for the people whose irrational fear has become a life-limiting complication, the possibility of selective suppression of fear perception could be liberating and even life-changing.
Tucked deep within the brain, the almond-shaped amygdalae is the oft-forgotten and perhaps under-appreciated pair of organs responsible for making you gasp when an approaching car starts drifting into your lane. In the case of the 44-year-old woman without fear, referred to simply as SM in medical write-ups, a rare condition known as Urbach–Wiethe disease has destroyed her amygdalae, rendering her entirely fearless. The prospect of a head-on automotive collision wouldn’t faze her. According to the studies conducted on her, neither do snakes, spider, scary movie clips or even being held at knife point cause a fear response.
While this may prove useful for her in stressful situations, it could have far greater meaning for people coping with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the University of Iowa researchers who conducted the research. In a study published in the journal Nature three years ago, researchers observed combat veterans who suffered brain damage including damage to the amygdalae and were seemingly immune to PTSD . Granted, tinkering with the brain to help erase the horrifying ghosts of warfare will require a lot more time and extensive studies before it can be practically applied. It yields hope, though, for people struggling with conditions such as social anxiety disorder, which have a direct correlation to the amygdalae, to someday live normal lives.
Furthermore, in the morally grey category, military applications of fear suppression could mean truly fearless fighters unaffected in their decision-making processes by limbic response. With their military training to guide them, soldiers without fear could mean processing situational data without the physical and psychological complications of emotional response. I think I can smell the DARPA funding already.
In the run up to my June wedding, I bucked one current trend: Bridal Boot Camp, a 12-week exercise torment designed to give you Michelle Obama’s arms to go with your strapless dress. Instead, I reverted to the time-honored “starve yourself for several weeks, then gain it back on the honeymoon” approach to preparing for the big day. It strikes me that Genzyme might also be trimming down before a marriage – either to French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis, who has proffered a rock worth $18.6 billion, or to some white knight who could ride in at the last moment, like in chick flicks.
By James M. Connolly
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