Camila Domenoski

So like thinking of

Everybody at the Olympics right now, maybe an athlete might be totally exhausted, but if they know that if they push a little more, they could win gold, maybe they're more likely to actually be able to overcome that fatigue.

That makes perfect sense, right?

You have this offering of a reward and you sort of do something superhuman.

You can do better than you've ever done before.

What about the flip side?

What about when Olympians choke and they mess up on something that they've been able to do before just fine?

Is that related to mental fatigue or is there something else going on?

Ventral striatum?

Yeah.

So if you're thinking that you might win the gold medal, that's great.

And if you're thinking, oh my God, if I mess up, I don't win the gold medal and I lose, then suddenly your brain can't work the same way?

Yeah, yeah.

You mentioned the ventral striatum.

Are there other big parts of the brain that are at play when someone's under pressure or having performance anxiety going on that you look at?

And, you know, I'm watching them do it on TV.

What does attention from other people do to someone's experience of trying to do a difficult task?

Like having millions of people watch you on live TV as you're taking your shot.

So a little, a medium sized reward, a few people watching really helpful, a lot, a giant reward, a ton of attention, like can actually make it really difficult to do something.

Olympians have to be able to compete with the most pressure that I can imagine.