The man, who once suffered from arachnophobia, can now stand freakishly close to spiders, even touch them

Nov 3, 2014 08:39 GMT  ·  By

A report in the journal Neurocase tells the tale of a man who switched from suffering from arachnophobia to being able to stand close to spiders and even touch them after doctors operated on him and chopped off part of his brain.

What's really wacky is that the surgeons who handled this case weren't even looking to cure the 44-year-old's arachnophobia at the time they cut into his brain. On the contrary, they merely wanted to rid him of seizures.

The ins and outs of this odd medical case

Writing in the journal Neurocase, the specialists who treated this man explain that, at the time he sought medical help, the 44-year-old patient had damage to the skin, lungs and brain. He was eventually diagnosed with a condition dubbed sarcoidosis.

By the looks of it, the damage that this illness caused to the man's brain centered around the left amygdala, a brain region located in the temporal lobe. Because of sarcoidosis' impact on his brain, the man experienced seizures on a regular basis.

Looking to help the 44-year-old lead a more normal life, surgeons decided to operate on him and remove the damaged left amygdala. They expected that, once this brain region was cut out, the patient would stop seizing.

International Business Times tells us that, shortly after the man awoke from surgery, doctors documented two fairly odd side-effects of the intervention. Thus, it appears that, following the removal of his left amygdala, the man started hating music and was no longer afraid of spiders.

Of these two behavioral changes, only the first waned over time. Simply put, the 44-year-old man can now pass the time petting spiders while listening to music. In fact, he says that he finds the creatures he once feared quite fascinating.

Interestingly enough, the removal of his left amygdala did not affect the man's personality and behavioral patterns in any other way. On the contrary, specialists say that, apart from his newly discovered fascination with spider, he is the same person.

How one case can make a world of difference

In their paper in the journal Neurocase, the surgeons who operated on this 44-year-old explain that, to their knowledge, this case is the first of this kind to have until now been documented by the scientific community.

“We report the case of a patient in whom arachnophobia was abolished after left temporal mesial lobectomy, with unchanged fear responses to other stimuli. The phenomenon of abolition of specific phobia after amygdala removal has not, to our knowledge, been previously reported,” they write.

It is believed that, in time, the details of this bizarre medical case could help scientists develop new treatments for various phobias that thousands of people worldwide are currently forced to live with.