[waitButWhy]

I bet the truth is, when it comes to static imagery, Alex Honnold just registers as excitable about different subject matter.

It sounds like they tried a largely negative gore-oriented image set (injuries and depictions of people in distress) to induce what could probably more accurately be interpretted as an unpleasant state of mind. For regular people of middling intellect who live sheltered lives, being subjected to strange viewing habits in a clinical setting probably registers as extremely odd. Alex, on the other hand approached the experiment after reaching a degree of celebrity that puts him beyond the possibility of an assessment that restricts him from acting freely.

He didn't submit to the experiment, until his career was sufficiently rewarding enough to be innately recognized as highly skilled, and thus beyond the reach of ordinary doctors adjucating him as a threat to himself or others, and thus preventing him from doing what he loves.

Therefore, nothing about the experimental setting was threatening, and he felt no pressure to masquerade with a "normal" response deceptively, or else attract psychiatric scrutiny, perhaps warranting medication and inviting pressure from family members and see other facets of his support network turn against him. With broad fame, he effectively deflects any ordinary institutional authority, and he has social proof of success, no matter what the machine records and reveals unexpectedly.

So then, take other conceptual image sets, and see what does catch a rise out of Alex Honnold, and I bet you'll find he's as human as any of us.

Show him sprawling incredible mountain vistas looking at the sun rise over a himalayan cloud deck, rivaling or far surpassing anything you could hope to see from the top of a tall building and I bet something jumps out from deeper within, than showing him images of a train wreck, because it has to be something real to him. Then the measurements will start showing numbers in keeping with other people's reaction to visual stimuli.

In psychology subject matter specific to the individual counts, and Alex has different tastes.

[bdamm]

Or perhaps a rope, dangling 20ft too short, would trigger him. I think you’re right. His “mental armor” technique is noteworthy, though. People often overlook the very significant training he undertook.

[waitButWhy]

Yeah, and honestly, I'm willing to bet that just "showing someone pictures" on some level simply doesn't work on a significant number of people.

Within a certain threshold, simply looking at an image will register an amount of activity in anybody's brain, but I think the context of the viewing situation, combined with the power differential of the individual controlling the slide show, obviously plays more heavily on the mind than the subject matter of the image itself.

For example, a kidnapper asking for a million dollars, and showing you a picture of your own child tied to a chair, while cocking a pistol and pointing it at you, is going to stress you a lot more as a credible threat, than a grad student in a doctor's office asking you to "think about things," while showing you a picture of some random crying child, while an MRI clicks and hums around you.

But for some people (probably many people), the grad student with the clipboard and the MRI, is actually kind of scary in it's own strange way.

[joveian]

These days it is not hard to come across a variety of shocking images and I can imagine that exposure to those could be correlated with the sensation seeking thing, making the images much more ordinary and leaving other considerations as stronger effects.

For some of us, the images themselves would be quite disturbing; just the description of them (that I have heard before) was enough to provoke a fairly strong reaction for me. I might have a somewhat unusually strong reaction, but I would have guessed that it was a fairly small percentage of people who would have little or no reaction. OTOH, a lot of things would make more sense if that percentage was quite a bit higher than I would think.

Also, fMRI descriptions always make it sound like the brain is at rest until it is being activated, but that is not how it works. Obviously the imaging tries to take into account how it actually works, but there can still be a number of issues. I don't know enough to have any idea how likely it is that there are technical issues here, but functional imaging is an area where major issues have gone undetected for surprisingly long periods of time so it should always be considered a plausable theory that the imaging isn't actually showing what we would like it to be showing.

[Fricken]

Yes, it should come as no surprise that someone who has dedicated themselves to managing their fear is good at managing their fear. He is not immune to panic, but he is very good at pulling himself together and carrying on.

[foobarbecue]

hah! You'd definitely get a reaction with that image... but I suspect it would be laughter.