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Updated: Apr 7, 2026

Human Fear Conditioning Conducted in Full Immersion 3-Dimensional Virtual Reality
Published on: August 9, 2010
Seeing Fear: It's All in the Eyes?
1Department of Psychology, 125 Nightingale Hall, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Psychiatric Neuroimaging Division, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Abstract:
Is an amygdala necessary to experience and perceive fear? Intriguing evidence comes from patient S.M. who lost her left and right amygdalae to disease. Initial testing suggested that S.M.'s most defining symptom was an inability to recognize fear in other people's facial expressions. A fascinating paper by Adolphs and colleagues in 2005 examined one potential mechanism for this impairment: a failure to spontaneously attend to widened eyes, the most distinctive physical feature portrayed in symbolic fear expressions. This study helped to invigorate debates about the brain basis of fear and paved the way for a more nuanced understanding of amygdalar function.
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