---
title: "Doctors Inadvertently Remove Fear From a Person’s Brain"
description: "Doctors can negate a person's fears by removing a specific part of the brain. The medical breakthrough was discovered by accident"
date: "2014-11-04"
modified: "2015-08-13"
authors:
  - name: "StefanCretu"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/stefancretu"
url: "https://futurism.com/doctors-removed-fears-persons-brain"
categories:
  - "Brain"
  - "Health & Medicine"
tags:
  - "neuroscience"
---

# Doctors Inadvertently Remove Fear From a Person’s Brain

![Default Futurism featured image](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Futurism-Filler-Image.jpg>)

- Doctors removed a patient's damaged left amygdala and soon after discovered that he no longer had his life long fear of spiders
- It appears that the surgery only removed the neural pathways related to the panic-type fear response, leaving the pathways necessary for generalized fear intact
- Thanks to the surgery, new techniques are being developed to weaken phobias