No.1 Neuroscientist: Your Whole Life Might Be a Prediction

There are these experiments where they train people to experience anxiety, but as determination, because exactly the same physical state could be experienced completely different. And what they discovered is that at first it's really hard, but you practice, practice, practice and then eventually it becomes really automatic. So the first thing to understand is that...

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a world-leading neuroscientist.

Her groundbreaking research reveals that emotions like anxiety and trauma are built by the brain.

And we have the power to control them.

The story is that you're born with these innate emotion circuits, but you're not born with the ability to control them. That's false. Really what's happening is that your brain is not reacting, it's predicting. And every action you take, every emotion you have is a combination of the remembered past, including any trauma. And so you don't have a sense of agency about it because it happens really automatically, faster than you can blink your eyes.

How does this change how we should treat trauma?

Sometimes in life you are responsible for changing something, not because you're to blame, but because you're the only person who can. I mean, I had a daughter who was clinically depressed, was getting D's in school. She wasn't sleeping. She was miserable. At first, she was so resistant, but then she made the decision that she wanted to be helped.

And did she recover?

Yes, she did. So if you want to change who you are, what you feel, understanding these basic operating principles is the key to living a meaningful life.

So what is step one to being able to make a change?

So...

This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is, if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, you have a really remarkable twisting career journey. It, it's almost quite difficult to, uh, encapsulate in a particular mission or a particular, uh, summary of the journey you've been on and the, the twists and turns you've taken. But if, if I were to ask you now what mission you're on with the work that you're currently doing, are you able to summarize that?

My goal is, as a science communicator, is to try to take really complicated science and present it in a way that people can use. You know, maybe they use it to entertain their friends at a dinner party. Maybe they use it to, um, help their kid who's, you know, struggling with depression. That was certainly, in my case, something that I had to deal with. Maybe they're using it to improve their workplace or improve the productivity of their, of their peeps or whatever. The point being that that's ultimately, that's what science is for. It's for, you know, living a better life. And average everyday people without PhDs can do that if they have the right information. Eh, I'm probably attempting to understand how it is that a brain like ours that is attached to a body like ours, that is pickled in a world like ours produces a mind. What is it? What is happening that allows you to have thoughts and feelings and memories, um, and, and actions, and somebody from another country, another culture also has a mental life which looks nothing like yours? How is it that the same kind of brain plan with the same general kind of body plan can produce such different types of minds when they are, when those brains are wired, in a sense, finish wiring themselves in cultural and physical contexts that are so widely different?