The summer of 1993 would turn out to be a turning point in Ralph Adolphs' life.That summer, he moved from sunny California to a massively flooded Iowa City, and began working with several people who would leave an indelible mark on his career. Antonio Damasio — a neuroscientist and book author famous for linking emotion and reason in the brain — was Adolphs' postdoctoral fellowship mentor at the University of Iowa. Dan Tranel, a young professor in the department, would become Adolphs' co-author on dozens of scientific papers, not to mention his running partner and best friend.And then there was S.M.A friendly and childlike woman in her late 20s, S.M. would become one of the most famous patients ever cited in the psychological literature. She has a rare genetic condition called lipoid proteinosis, in which calcium deposits eat away at the brain tissue. Unlike in other patients with this disease, however, S.M.'s lesions are localized to just one spot on each side: the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of tissue sitting deep behind the eyes.For nearly two decades, using any technique he can, Adolphs has been trying to figure out how S.M.'s mind — and, by extension, the human amygdala — works. An avid outdoorsman, Adolphs, 47, has run a dozen 50- and 100-mile races, and his colleagues say he approaches science with the same stamina and intensity. He has already published more than 100 scientific papers, several of them revealing intriguing ties between S.M. and people with other brain disorders, including autism.Tranel first published S.M.'s case report in 1990, to little fanfare. She was just one of hundreds listed in the university's world-famous registry of patients with brain lesions.That collection lured Adolphs — a foodie and wilderness lover — to the flatlands of the Midwest: he was convinced it would help him understand how the brain generates and understands emotions in people, rather than in animal models.Within a year of meeting S.M., he had published a paper in Nature showing that she cannot identify fear in facial expressions. Years later, using an eye-tracking machine, he discovered why: she doesn't look people in the eyes.Read more at...SFARI, September 2010.