
Woman With No Fear Intrigues Scientists - arondeparon
http://www.livescience.com/health/woman-has-no-fear-ptsd-101216.html
======
Monkeyget
Fearlessness is a trait of psychopaths. It appears that the amygdala is
dysfunctional in psychopaths :

" the amygdala is crucial for stimulus–reinforcement learning and responding
to emotional expressions, particularly fearful expressions that, as
reinforcers, are important initiators of stimulus–reinforcement learning.
Moreover, the amygdala is involved in the formation of both
stimulus–punishment and stimulus–reward associations. Individuals with
psychopathy show impairment in stimulus–reinforcement learning (whether
punishment or reward based) and responding to fearful and sad expressions. It
is argued that this impairment drives much of the syndrome of psychopathy.
Stimulus–reinforcement learning is crucial for socialization, for learning
that some things are bad to do, and individuals with psychopathy fail to take
advantage of standard socialization techniques."

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2606709/?tool=pm...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2606709/?tool=pmcentrez)

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srean
While one may want to be fearless or without the ability to feel pain, they
are essential emotions and sensations. The lack of either can be life
threatening.

Its common among those who cannot feel pain to have bitten of their tongue or
crushed their own teeth or jaw bone. Inability to feel pain is often
accompanied by inability to sense temperature. People afflicted by this
disease rarely live beyond their 20s. The reason being that they cannot
monitor and correct for their bodies inner core temperature. The run a way
fever or hypothermia turns fatal.

~~~
powrtoch
Pain, yes. Fear, debatable.

Fear plays a role in helping people to assess danger, and in making decisions
related to your survival and well being. Neither of these things _require_ a
fear response though. The article mentions that the woman might have found
herself in dangerous situations more often due to her inability to fear, but
at best this means that fear might be a useful addition to our ability to
assess danger.

It seems to me that the vast majority of situations that are dangerous are
either a) obviously so, or b) the opposite. In obviously dangerous situations,
you should be able to pick up on the danger by common sense and act
accordingly (I don't feel fear every time I cross the street, but I also don't
step out in front of cars). In situations where the danger element is very
hidden away, it's unlikely you'd get a fear response anyway, since your
intuition is only as good as its input.

That leaves a third category, that for which the danger is non-obvious, but
fear gives us an evolved intuitive-response to be wary. My argument would be
that this is a small and constantly shrinking class of situations, because the
environment most of us find ourselves in is so strikingly different than the
one in which we evolved. You might have an evolved, intuitive fear response to
the sound of a lion's roar, but this does no good whatsoever for most people
in the world. So most of the dangerous situations we actually encounter, we
deal with using reason and learned behavior rather than fear instinct.

That's my stance anyway. The only area in which I can see a concrete use for
fear is its ability to stimulate a very quick flight reaction in certain
dangerous situations. That is, things that you need to react to before you
have time to think them through. Again, less common in the modern western
world, but it does put at least one point in the pro-fear column.

~~~
kenjackson
I think you underestimate how often fear comes into play. I recently was at
the park with some kids and I noticed a couple of dogs playing... I then
realized they were pitbulls. Maybe perfectly nice dogs, but my fear factor
jumped through the roof and I quickly, but quietly gathered up all the kids.

Now fear isn't something that kicks in often, but when it does it usually
means you're in pretty grave danger. Not properly reacting to potentially life
threatening situations, just once a year, likely greatly shortens your
expected lifespan.

~~~
JanezStupar
Pitbulls are _not_ vicious child eaters by their nature. They are called nanny
dogs for a reason. May be just the people I am around - but I have yet to see
a Pit that is anything beyond sweet, loving and awesome.

Now puddles - those are a kind of beast I would never trust to act decently
around my kids.

~~~
jules
So are you saying that the idea that pitbulls type dogs are the most dangerous
kind of dog is bullshit? The statistics don't agree with your personal
experience.

~~~
JanezStupar
Correlation now counts as causation on HNews?

Pitbulls greatest asset and its ultimate downfall is its wonderful toned
muscular body and its iron will. Thats why they get picked up by assholes who
tend to abuse them and _train_ them to attack humans. Its the owners that are
problem not the dogs. These guys could make any kind of animal into a "vicious
killer".

The pit is anecdotally the worst breed for guard dog. They tend to be that
friendly towards humans. You have to remember that these dogs _were indeed_
bred for fighting. Dogs not humans. So they were heavily bred to be friendly
towards humans - how else can one control a powerful beast if it won't obey
you and let you tend its wounds?

They are so protective of children that you can easily let one babysit your
kid while you're away.

Condemning the breed because of their retarded owners is like condemning whole
minorities because of gang members.

~~~
jules
I'm sorry but given the choice between your personal hunches/anecdotes/biases
and published statistics I'm going with the latter:

    
    
        Year	Total	# Most fatal attacks by	       # Second-most fatal attacks by
        2005	29	Pit bull-type (18) (62%)	Rottweiler (6) (21%)
        2006	29	Pit bull-type (15) (52%)	Rottweiler (8) (27%)
        2007	34	Pit bull-type (18) (53%)	Rottweiler (4) (12%)
        2008	23	Pit bull-type (15) (65%)	Husky (3) (13%)
        2009	30	Pit bull-type (14) (47%)	Rottweiler (4) (13%)
        2010	32	Pit bull-type (22) (69%)	Rottweiler (3) (9%)
    

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_dog_attacks_in_the_United_States)

The vast majority of these deaths were <10 year olds.

> The pit is anecdotally the worst breed for guard dog. They tend to be that
> friendly towards humans. You have to remember that these dogs were indeed
> bred for fighting. Dogs not humans. So they were heavily bred to be friendly
> towards humans - how else can one control a powerful beast if it won't obey
> you and let you tend its wounds?

Yeah right that's why they are the #1 human killer dogs with a spectacular
margin.

> They are so protective of children that you can easily let one babysit your
> kid while you're away.

 _shudder_ until your 3 year old accidentally hits the pitbull on the nose.

Do you happen to own a pitbull?

~~~
JanezStupar
Had I owned one - I'd have already disclosed it. I'd love to raise a pit -
it's just that currently I'm in no position to own such a demanding animal.
However I love to hang around people who do own them.

As far as statistics go - there pretty skewed:
[http://animals.change.org/blog/view/are_dog_bite_statistics_...](http://animals.change.org/blog/view/are_dog_bite_statistics_reliable)
\- yes thats a blog post - but I couldn't be bothered to perform a more
thorough research, I'm sorry.

I agree that pitbull attacks will result in more damage and are more prone to
kill somebody. But thats not because there _evil_ or _go crazy_ , its because
when you mistreat a poodle - you get a minor annoyance, but when you mistreat
a pit - you get a 100 pound of muscle and bones bomb ticking to go off.

> shudder until your 3 year old accidentally hits the pitbull on the nose.

Pits _not_ reacting to a 3 year old punching them is _exactly_ the reason they
are so good with kids. Pits pain threshold is so high they don't mind kids
being abusive towards them (lets face it thats what kids do to animals).

I guess that asshats will keep mistreating their dogs and enjoying in making
them _vicious_ and that something has to be done. But banning the dog is the
wrong thing to do. _Dangerous dog handlers license_ or/and _personality
screen_ of owners is the correct way to go IMHO.

~~~
jules
That blog post contains no evidence for anything whatsoever, again it's just a
bunch of hunches and biases. It is also not relevant to the statistics I
posted, their central claim is:

> an incident could be anything from an accidental and playful scratch or nip
> to a full-blown attack by a poorly-trained, aggressive dog.

But the statistics I posted ARE KILLINGS.

> I agree that pitbull attacks will result in more damage and are more prone
> to kill somebody. But thats not because there evil or go crazy, its because
> when you mistreat a poodle - you get a minor annoyance, but when you
> mistreat a pit - you get a 100 pound of muscle and bones bomb ticking to go
> off.

And again zero evidence to back up this claim. There is evidence to the
contrary however: there are plenty of dogs that are bigger than pitbulls and
perfectly capable of killing a kid with a single bite. Yet they aren't
responsible for ~60% of the deaths.

Also it only seems logical that dogs bred for being aggressive are aggressive.
In the same way I'd argue for keeping your kids away from fighting breed cocks
(I've been attacked by them, and while they don't do much damage to adults,
you don't want to be attacked by them when your height is such that your eyes
are within their reach).

If you have any _evidence_ to the contrary, please do post it here.

> I guess that asshats will keep mistreating their dogs and enjoying in making
> them vicious and that something has to be done. But banning the dog is the
> wrong thing to do. Dangerous dog handlers license or/and personality screen
> of owners is the correct way to go IMHO.

I'm arguing for keeping kids away from pitbulls. Do not let your kids play
with them. Whether it is the right thing to ban pitbulls depends on how you
value the joy they bring their owners over another dog breed against the
deaths they cause.

------
cheriot
"Previous studies with this patient revealed she can't recognize fear in
facial expressions, but it was unknown if she had the ability to experience
fear herself."

People have been say "it takes one to know one" for a long time, but real
evidence that we can't recognized something unless we have that same capacity
within ourselves would be piercing.

Tell me again why are so many self proclaimed good people are convinced that
everyone else is evil?

~~~
Natsu
> but real evidence that we can't recognized something unless we have that
> same capacity within ourselves would be piercing.

It would be difficult to find someone with no capacity for evil, wouldn't it?

------
Groxx
> _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 rest of the article aside: I don't think that's _quite_ conclusive. After
a few such trials, it'd get merely interesting or boring, and I have to wonder
how skilled at frightening _specific_ people researchers can ever be. On a
more fundamental level, I highly doubt you can even perform an accurate test
along these lines with a person's consent.

"People" as a whole? Easy, someone's always afraid of something at-hand. A
single person, who knows what you're doing? Unlikely. Case in point: a little
work with acclimating to spiders, and I'd pass those tests with flying colors.
Haunted houses and scary film clips fall somewhere between mild amusement at
the attempt and outright boredom, and I like snakes. Plus, snakes don't have
legs / claws; get the head under control, and you're fine.

------
joshrule
It's interesting that most of her other emotions function normally. It was my
understanding that the amygdala facilitated a number of emotions, not just
fear. Am I wrong?

~~~
alexwestholm
"The diary also had her indicate emotions she was feeling from a list of 50
items. Her average score of fear was 0 percent, while for other emotions she
showed normal functioning."

Far apart from the brain structure involved, what amazed me the most is the
severability of fear from other emotions. For someone untrained in
neuroscience and coming purely from an experiential point of view, it seems
impossible that one emotion could be completely absent without having any
effects on the functioning of others. For instance, even with an emotion like
happiness, it seems like there's some component of the feeling that relates to
the enjoyment of being free of fearful things. Perhaps the emotions don't
actually function the same, but her perception of them is similar to
unaffected patients?

~~~
dawgr
I think it has to do with how primitive or instinctive the emotion is. I'd bet
that fear is one of the oldest emotions, after all every animal experiences
fear as far as I know.

Many of the other emotions are restricted to apes, specially humans. I'd say a
dog can't be happy or sad, just excited or not excited. If those human
emotions evolved thousands of years apart there is a good chance that they are
at different parts of the brain.

------
rokhayakebe
Not only does she not fear, but it appears she cannot assess danger (picked up
a snake).

~~~
adammichaelc
If you aren't afraid of the snake, what's the danger?

~~~
sandipc
that it bites you and kills you? Fear is not a requirement for that to happen.

~~~
shawndumas
not all snakes are poisonous.

~~~
srean
Its only a tiny fraction of all snakes that are poisonous and of them, not all
are deadly to humans. But this is largely irrelevant because the chances are
high that the snake in front of you has not been sampled uniformly from the
distribution of all snakes. A lot of factors dictate the statistical make up
of a snake that one may encounter and its aggression level. Geography, weather
and time of the year play an important role.

Let me give an anecdotal example. My college has a reputation with snakes, so
much so that pea-cocks were artificially introduced to control their
population. I would hazard a conservative guess that 50% of all students
encounter a snake in close proximity every year. These are almost always a
cobra, krait or local species of a viper. All extremely poisonous. Nonetheless
in the entire history of the institution there has not been a single instance
of a snake bite, and they have actually stopped stocking on anti-venom.

But unless you are trained to handle snakes, picking them up is certainly not
wise and my prior would be high that she did not have such a training.

~~~
kragen
This varies a lot by location. I guess you're in India, where there are lots
of dangerous snakes. It sounds like SM is in North America, where there are
only four poisonous snakes — cottonmouth, rattlesnake, copperhead, and coral
snake — and they're all pretty easy to identify, and for the most part, not
very aggressive. The vast majority of individual snakes in most parts of the
US aren't one of these types, especially in urban areas.

~~~
srean
You guessed correctly about my college.

What I found fascinating was the difference in aggression level of the same
species at different times of the year. The speed of their strike also blew me
away. But they can cover very short distances with that, so the trained
handlers would pick them up like nothing.

But back to fear and reflexes. I had the opportunity to study one of the
aggressive ones very closely in a protective enclosure. How much ever I
resolved not to flinch when it lunged at me, I would invariably jump back a
pace. The override is just way too strong to control consciously even when you
can anticipate it and want to counter it. Even when you know you are not in
any danger.

What I find interesting is that I dont think we are hardwired to fear snakes,
it is learned. The hardwired bit might relate to sudden motion though.

~~~
Semiapies
You're correct - fear of snakes is not instinctual in humans. Most young
primates will avoid a snake, while a young child who hasn't been taught
otherwise will blithely walk over and pick one up.

~~~
srean
I upvoted you for confirming my hunch. But not sure why it did not get added.

------
gyardley
Research into this could have clear and fascinating military applications.
They're already well aware that a controlled psychopath is an asset:

[https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/bd7eed04567bfe2b85...](https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/bd7eed04567bfe2b85256e3b002f29c1?OpenDocument)

~~~
anigbrowl
Interesting, though somewhat disturbing. Using this research to select from
nature's random yield is one thing, but leads one into something of an ethical
minefield. Inducing or enhancing similar characteristics by neural
modification would be bad, but people who already exhibit such pathologies
wouldn't find that troubling at all.

The author seems a olittle overly-assured of his conclusions but that may just
be the result of the short article form - the bibliography seems worth a look.
3-4% of the adult male population is a higher incidence than I'd have
expected.

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ScottBurson
This woman has missed her calling. She could be one of the greatest poker
players the world has ever known.

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geoffw8
IMO, your arguing with evolution. Its there for a reason.

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itisfritz
This woman has not met me....

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chopsueyar
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_palin>

------
known
I think she is suffering from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASPD>

