The Neuroscience of Being Human
The Neuroscience of Paragliding
Fear and its regulation, the body as part of the aircraft, active piloting under turbulence and the awe of the small self: what the brain is really doing when a fabric wing carries a person off a mountainside
2,498-word article with 22 Harvard references.
Premium article
Paragliding is free flight in its most stripped-down form: a person, a harness and a fabric wing that only stays flying while the air co-operates and the pilot keeps working. It asks the brain to master fear at the launch, to feel the wing through the body as if it were an extension of the self, to pilot actively through turbulence rather than sit passively, and to hold honest judgement against the pull of thrill. This fully referenced article examines the neuroscience beneath free flight: the threat system and how fear is regulated, proprioception and the sense of the wing, prediction and active control, risk and sensation-seeking, and the awe of hanging small beneath a canopy in a vast sky. It treats the risks with the seriousness they deserve.
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- Full 2,498-word article with 22 Harvard references
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