Experiments of nature are illnesses and injuries that reveal important pieces of scientific knowledge. They are fascinating because they usually represent “experiments” that would be grossly unethical for a scientist to carry out. No one’s going to ask a surgeon to open up a person’s head and cut out their amygdala. But once in a while it happens on its own. In this case, scientists studied two patients who had Urbach–Wiethe disease, a rare condition that destroys the amygdala on both sides of the brain. When these individuals were presented with wagers, they attached equal weight to gain and
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