Knowing no fear

People with brain injuries involving the amygdala are often poor at recogni zing facial expressions of fear, but the extent to which this impairment co mpromises other signals of the emotion of fear has not been clearly establi shed. We investigated N.M.., a person with bilateral amygdala damage and a left thalamic lesion! who was impaired at recognizing fear from facial expr essions. N.M, showed an equivalent deficit affecting fear recognition from body postures and emotional sounds. His deficit of fear recognition was not linked to evidence of any problem in recognizing anger (a common feature i n other reports), but for his everyday experience of emotion N.M. reported reduced anger and fear compared with neurologically normal controls. These findings show a specific deficit compromising the recognition of the emotio n of fear from a wide range of social signals, and suggest a possible relat ionship of this type of impairment with alterations of emotional experience .