The thrill of the thrill

Extreme sports of the skydiving and bungee-jumping variety are perhaps the most paradoxical of all human behaviours, flying straight in the face of our most primal instincts to survive. What compels someone of sound mind to throw themselves out of perfectly serviceable aeroplanes, dive headfirst in the abyss from a rickety bridge, or decide that jumping into the sea to share the water with a bloodthirsty shark is a good idea?

The rush starts in the amygdala, the bundle of neurons at the base of the brain responsible for assessing the unknown. Its job is to recognise danger and unpredictable outcomes, and send your body into fight-or-flight mode. Any thrilling situation poses some kind of risk—whether perceived or real—which the amygdala registers and to which it releases a surge of dopamine, adrenaline and endorphins. How much of each depends on the perceived level of risk, which is why one activity might offer a greater rush than another.

Every person’s brain assesses unknown situations differently but the reaction is the same: vision narrows; adrenaline increases heart rate; oxygen floods the brain which gives you the rush; and once the rush is over (just 60 seconds later), the immediate aftermath is a swath of mood-boosting feel-good chemicals. Is it any wonder we do this again and again?

While researching the appeal of rollercoasters, Dr Margaret King, director of the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis in Philadelphia, and colleague Jamie O’Boyle found the peak moment of exhilaration comes from experiencing a risk you know will be survived. On a rollercoaster, logic says we’ll be fine, but the body and brain responds to more than logic and is overwhelmed by the fear response; at the end of the ride, we experience the moment of ‘survival’ as a thrill.

L’appel du vide

The call of the void sounds like a uniquely French phenomenon, but new science on balance, fear, and cognition shows that the voice calling you to jump into the abyss is both real and powerful. Jennifer Hames, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame, dubs the sudden impulse to jump the ‘High Place Phenomenon.’ She found that half of 431 subjects who’d never considered suicide had thought about jumping from somewhere high and theorised that the urge may come from a misinterpretation of a signal sent to the conscious brain by the body’s safety systems. The amygdala sends an alarm to the prefrontal cortex—fight or flight? Conscious processing operates slower than the fear circuitry so while the body experiences intense fear, triggering the release of the aforementioned chemicals, dopamine floods the brain and could encourage you to approach a situation that you might otherwise want to back away from. Instead of recoiling from a logical threat, you feel the urge to chase the thrill.

For high-sensation thrill-seekers, it might take jumping from 18,000 feet to feel the thrill; for many of us, just buckling into a rollercoaster is enough. It’s chasing that high that differs—we all need different levels of stimulation. Some theorists suggest the dopamine system in adventure seekers is sluggish, meaning they have to ramp things up to feel any of the effects. Another theory is that the urge to jump stems from the human tendency to gamble in the face of great risk: when the situation is dire, people are less risk averse. Adam Anderson, a Cornell University cognitive neuroscientist explains: ‘Being somewhat anxious of heights myself, I feel the pull of the ground, as if it is a safe place. It doesn’t make sense, of course, since jumping would cause death, but our intrinsic biases place a greater value on avoiding present loss than a future gain. We solve the fear of heights problem with jumping, and only then are we confronted with the fear of death problem.’

Thrill-seeking is behaviour unique to humans—animals in the wild don’t seek out fear just for the fun of it. And we all house the neurophysiology to respond instinctively in positive ways to extreme situations. Just don’t die in pursuit of a dopamine hit, okay? ■

Adventure

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