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General Climbing Discussion

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Climbing an Adrenaline sport? 10-Oct-2007 At 9:56:41 AM dougal

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Do adrenaline junkies have less adrenaline? Sort of - current neuroscience thinking is that folks who tend towards hyperactivity have brains which require more exogenous (outside) stimulation to be activated. The cells responsible for general cortical (big bit of brain) activation have a higher threshold (the point at which if stimulated a nerve cell will 'fire.' (thought to be genetically determined). The brain runs on a 'reward' system. You do this - you get that. They need to do 'more;' get more stimulation, to reach threashold and fire up the cortex (ideas, thoughts, motor etc) limbic area (emotional - ooh yeah, oh no) and get the 'reward' which are the chemicals that make us feel satisfied, good, comfortable in ourselves, alert. So even the idea of jumping off that cliff gets their juices flowing.

Is climbing an adrenaline sport? That's a bit of a populist phrase now isn't it. Does it really mean anything? A big function of your brain (the big bit) is simply to monitor and fire up the motor system as required. climbing HAS to fire it up otherwise you can't do it and it's clearly not in the same zone as walking to work but likely more like sex but we're all different.