Scared of the dark? Terrified of heights? Spiders make you scream? For the first time, a person's lifelong phobia has been completely abolished overnight. Unfortunately, it required removing a tiny bit of the man's brain, so for now, most people will have to find another way to dispel their fears. 
 
 The phobia was abolished by accident. A 44-year-old business man started having seizures out of the blue. Brain scans showed he had an abnormality in his left amygdala – an area in the temporal lobe involved in emotional reactions, among other things. Further tests showed the cause was sarcoidosis, a rare condition that causes damage to the lungs, skin and, occasionally, the brain. 
 
 Doctors decided it was necessary to remove the man's damaged left amygdala. The surgery went well, but soon after the man noticed a strange turn of events. Not only did he have a peculiar "stomach-lurching" aversion to music – which was particularly noticeable when he heard the song accompanying a certain TV advert – but he also discovered he was no longer afraid of spiders. 
 
 While his aversion to music waned over time, his arachnophobia never returned. Before the surgery he would throw tennis balls at spiders, or use hairspray to immobilise them before vacuuming them up. Now he is able to touch and observe the little critters at close distance and says he actually finds them fascinating. He hasn't noticed any changes to other kinds of fears or anxieties. For example, he is equally as anxious about public speaking now as he was prior to surgery. 
 
 Phobia or fear? 
 
 The man was observed by Nick Medford at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK, and his colleagues. Medford, who co-authored a paper on the case with medical student Sophie Binks, says it is difficult to know just how a single phobic response has been picked off in this man. 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's like when you see a snake and you jump back in alarm, but when you look back you realise it's just a stick," he says. "That's your quick-and-dirty panic response: it isn't very accurate but it's necessary for basic survival. 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. Alas, it is not possible to assess other aspects of the man's panic response to see if they had also diminished, as he had no other phobias and did not want to undergo further testing. 
 
 However, Medford reckons it would be possible to test the theory in others. "It's not uncommon for people to have temporal lobe surgery for severe epilepsy. 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 too deep in the brain to attempt to disrupt it using non-invasive techniques to cure other people of their phobias, says Medford. But there are several other fear-dampening techniques being trialled, including weakening phobias using a blood pressure pill and stimulating certain brain areas in a bid to erase fearful memories. 
 
 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. In fact, the disease was sarcoidosis, which in his case resulted in granulomatous encephalitis. 
 
 If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to. ||||| One day he was drowning spiders in hair spray and vacuuming up their frozen bodies for quick disposal. The next, he was completely at peace with the eight-legged menaces. He has his seizures to thank. 
 
 The story of a man losing his arachnophobia overnight is the subject of a case study recently published in the journal Neurocase. Forty-four years old and paralyzed with a fear of spiders, the man began experiencing seizures out of the blue. Brain scans showed his amygdala, the walnut-sized portion of the brain responsible in part for handling fear, had some abnormalities. 
 
 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. 
 
 The surgery was a success, if also an interesting look into how fear works. While the man did stop having seizures, he also lost some other sensations. Music, for one, lost its luster. What once sounded like a beautiful melody now made the man’s stomach lurch with revulsion. But while these feelings eventually subsided, his fear of spiders never returned. 
 
 Once apt to get immobilized with a quick aerosol spray and promptly sucked up, the bugs now drummed up no response — the man’s disgust turning to indifference and then eventually to full-on fascination. He reported total comfort with touching spiders and letting them crawl over his hands and arms. The effects prompted doctors to revisit the entire premise of fear and wonder whether they could knock out individual phobias in the future. 
 
 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. One theory implicates the two different kinds of fear response. The first is the kneejerk reaction. It’s the snake-in-the-grass 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." These fears are slow to register and spark a more general unease. They include more social fears, like public speaking, parallel parking, and the fear of failure. 
 
 Medford submits the neural pathway associated with his subject’s arachnophobia must have resided somewhere in the portion of the amygdala that got removed. But it’s still anyone’s guess how, exactly, these specific fears are organized in the brain. Just because Medford may offer a ballpark doesn’t mean scientists can start zapping fears away one-by-one. There is, however, an interesting side note, Medford says. 
 
 "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 most popular is exposure therapy. It argues placing a spider in the man’s hand may have yielded the same effect as cutting into his head, no incisions necessary. 
 
 Then there is the idea that fearful memories can be erased in full, although much of the science still needs to be established before Eternal Sunshine fans can begin to clamor. For now, you still have a better chance of suffering a seizure and having part of your brain removed than science does of recreating fiction. Score one for happy accidents. 
 
 Source: Binks S, Chan D, Medford N. Abolition of lifelong specific phobia: a novel therapeutic consequence of left mesial temporal lobectomy. Neurocase. 2014.
– 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.