Alex Honnold's Strange Brain

Alex Honnold scales sheer rock faces, thousands of feet high, without ropes or protective equipment of any kind. He may be history’s greatest-ever free solo climber. To call him fearless is not just a figure of speech. His brain does have an amygdala, a “fear centre,” but MRI scans show that nothing seems to activate it. “Where there is no activation, there probably is no threat response. Honnold really could be feeling no fear up there. None at all. None whatsoever.”

From “The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber” by J.B. McKinnon for Nautilus; Photo by Jimmy Chin (@jimmy_chin) 

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