Brain scans showed he had an abnormality in his left amygdala – an area in the temporal lobe involved in emotional reactions, among other things. But, later tests showed it wasn’t anything to do with these fear centers but a rare disease affecting his central nervous system, known as granulomatous encephalitis. Relying on the same logic that calls for surgically removing cancerous tissue and treating epilepsy patients, the doctors decided the offending portions of his amygdala had to go. While the man did stop having seizures, he also lost some other sensations. While his aversion to music waned over time, his arachnophobia never returned. Scientists can only speculate as to what caused the man’s fear of spiders to fade but leave his other fears, like the fear of public speaking, intact. Broadly speaking, he says, it might have something to do with the fact that we appear to have two different types of fear response. “It isn't very accurate, but it's necessary for basic survival,” said Nick Medford, the man’s observing physician, of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. “And then there's the more nuanced fear-appraisal, which takes longer to process but is more accurate." Medford suggests that in the man's case, perhaps some of the neural pathways related to the panic-type fear response were eliminated with the removal of the left amygdala, while the parts of the amygdala responsible for generalised fear remained intact. "It's not uncommon for people to have temporal lobe surgery for severe epilepsy,” he said. “And arachnophobia is supposed to be reasonably common. So we might be able to test people for that phobia, or any other kind, before and after surgery." The amygdala is already out as far as non-invasive techniques go — it’s simply too deep in the brain to get at — but other methods are currently in use. The phobia was abolished by accident. Journal reference: Neurocase, DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2013.873056 
 
 Correction, 31 October 2014: When this article was first published, it said the damage in the man's brain was caused by granulomatous encephalitis.
– A man's surgery for seizures had an unexpected result: When he woke up, he was no longer scared of spiders. The 44-year-old used to kill spiders with hair spray and a vacuum; now, he's fine with letting them crawl all over him, Medical Daily reports. The reasons aren't clear, but it seems to have something to do with his amygdala, part of the brain which deals with fear. Parts of it were removed in the surgery to get rid of his seizures—which also disappeared after the operation. Interestingly, other fears remained after the surgery, including the man's fear of public speaking. This could be because arachnophobia prompts a "quick-and-dirty panic response," whereas a fear of public speaking is a different, "more nuanced" kind of worry, an expert says. The surgery might only have operated on the "panic" pathway, the expert adds. On the downside, the surgery also temporarily removed the man's love for music: For a while, he was repulsed by tunes, especially one on a particular TV commercial, New Scientist reports. Fortunately, that revulsion faded; meanwhile, the man could now probably handle spiders hatching in his bananas.