Is Your Amygdala the Threat Detection System?

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I think one of the things I found endlessly fascinating was that neuroscientists had found that you had limited amygdala activation in your brain, at least in response to sort of ordinary stimuli. It seemed perfectly natural that my amygdala wouldn't trigger while looking at pictures while laying in a safe metal tube because I'm totally safe. But apparently, you know, the average human responds to images that they see the same way they would an actual threat. So if they see a picture of a spider, it triggers the same thing as if there was a spider there.

In 2017, Alex Honnold did what even the world’s best rock climbers thought was impossible. He climbed to the top of El Capitan– a granite rock mountain more than 3,000 feet high– without a rope, harness, or net. His audacious feat was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo,” and it left Adam Grant with some burning questions about what we can learn from his unique approach to managing fear. In this episode of ReThinking, another podcast in the TED Audio Collective, Alex opens up about how he regulates his emotions when he’s hanging on by just a few fingers, what still scares him, and how he stays motivated to pursue ambitious goals. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/RWAG2. And for more conversations on how the world’s most interesting people think, follow ReThinking with Adam Grant wherever you're listening to this.