How are they able to perform well under intense pressure? Literally life or death situations. I’m talking about hardcore parkour or crazy people climbing skyscrappers.
Have their brains been altered that they can’t feel fear from their stunts?
Alex Honnold is the best free solo climber in the world, man can climb el cap or half dome in a few hours without a rope, where it takes a normal climber days to get up. But the man literally has an underdeveloped brain, or at least part of it. After doing brain scans found out his amygdala has ZERO activation, so he literally experiences fear differently than a normal person, if at all!
No expert here, but this is an ELI5, so…
Turns out, there’s something in our brains that trigger instinctive fears. This is good for survival, generally.
Some people have too much of that, so they become very afraid of things (phobias) or they might even develop more serious mental issues.
On the other side of the spectrum, there’s these guys you talk about. People who were predisposed or either “learned” to be more “fearless”, the most extreme guys being basically already dead by stupidity.
I was admonished to be careful on a dirtbike as a child, had a fear reinforced in me. Meanwhile, this other kid was quite aggressive, and would piss me off when he’d fly by me on the track. In contrast with my parents cautions, his parents encouraged his style and he was a very highly ranked competitor in the state. He was WOT no matter where he was, turns, jumps, passing me. Absolutely fearless.
He had a bad day at the races when he was about 10 years old, suffered a significant brain injury. And he hasn’t been independent since.
