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I ran across an article briefly describing a woman suffering from Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWd). UWd leaves calcification within the amygdala and in this case subject lost all sense of fear (this case appears somewhat unique as people with UWd end of up with severe anxiety, other mood disorders, or psychosis).

This left me with a question is it possible to shut down emotions either in a targeted manner or in entirety?

Please note that I am not interested in pharmacological solutions to this question. Brain lesioning, genetic engineering, and the like are the intended targets of this question.

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Human wetware is messy. There are no nice neat clearly delineated modules... boundaries are messy, slightly different from person to person and things can get rewired and repurposed in response to damage. Furthermore, human emotions aren't really clearly defined either... "fear" is a complex of intellectual and physiological reactions, some learned, some innate, which will have slightly different manifestations in different people. It'll be tricky to develop a one-size-fits-all emotion modulator... your example shows an unexpectedly different response to a specific kind of damage, highlighting how tricky this stuff is likely to be.

Your example also clearly demonstrates that it is possible to substantially and permanently alter emotional and physiological responses via brain damage, and one source of that brain damage is a genetic disease. That mostly answers your own question for you. It is also possible to modulate emotional responses temporarily via noninvasive techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation or more invasively via electrical brain stimulation. Wireheads have existed in real life.

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