I watched a documentary recently (Free Solo), and in one part of the film, it showed via an MRI that the main character has ‘no activation in your amygdala’. What does this mean?
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The amygdala, to my knowledge, deals with be processing of emotions, mostly fear. It’s what alerts us to proceed with caution and is part of our survival instruct to keep us from danger. It also deals with memory through emotion (since fear is the strongest emotion it’s often associated with that for memory as well).
The amygdala processes fear. If someone’s amygdala doesn’t active they won’t feel fear. This means they are more likely to take risks and do dangerous stunts.
The amygdala activates our “flight or fight” instinct (people have added other words to this like “freeze”) which essentially is our survival mechanism. Dude in *Free Solo* has no survival instinct. I remember this movie but forgot this detail and yep. ‘splains a lot.
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