DO YOU have a friend who loves bungee jumping, and insists it never scares them? Their bravado may have a biological basis: the bodies and brains of some thrill-seekers react less to threat than others.
at Stony Brook University in New York, recruited 30 first-time skydivers and used fMRI imaging to observe whether their brain circuits involved in risk assessment were well-regulated. A well-regulated circuit is one that reacts to a threat and then returns to a normal state once the threat has gone.
To test this, a loud, unpleasant noise was made as the skydivers lay in the scanner. They were also shown a series of faces 鈥� some aggressive, some less so 鈥� to test their threat perception. And on the day of the jump, the team measured stress hormones before and after.
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They found that people with better regulation were better at recognising threat in angry faces. They also showed larger increases in stress hormones. Poor regulation was linked with poorer threat recognition and smaller hormone rises (NeuroImage, ).
鈥淚t really has to do with the reckless and the brave,鈥� says at Rockefeller University, New York. 鈥淭he reckless seem to have a brain that doesn鈥檛 react as it should to alert them to danger.鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭hrill-seekers鈥� brains feel no fear鈥�