Fear in diabetes

T woman touched the snake’s flickering tongue. She was fascinated, and completely unafraid. Indeed, she kept asking to touch the poisonous snakes too, and they had to stop her picking up the tarantula. She found the haunted house funny and scared one of the ‘monsters’ by poking it in the head. The fearless subject of these unusual experiments is SM who has Urbach-Wiethe disease. This condition includes bilateral destruction of the amygdala. ‘SM provides a rare glimpse into the adverse consequences of living life without the amygdala. For SM, the consequences have been severe. Her behavior, time and time again, leads her back to the very situations she should be avoiding, highlighting the indispensable role that the amygdala plays in promoting survival by compelling the organism away from danger. Indeed, it appears that without the amygdala, the evolutionary value of fear is lost.’1