How Relationships Shape Your Brain | Dr. Allan Schore

(uptempo music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Allan Schore. Dr. Allan Schore is a clinician psychoanalyst, and he is the world expert in how childhood attachment patterns impact our adult relationships, including romantic relationships, friendships, and professional relationships, as well as our relationship to ourselves. Dr. Schore is on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine. He is also the author of several important books, including Right Brain Psychotherapy and Development of the Unconscious Mind. Today's discussion with Dr. Schore is an extremely important one for everyone to hear, to understand themselves and to understand the people in their lives. Why? Well, we all go through the first 24 months of age. You wouldn't be listening to this if you hadn't. And during that first 24 months of age, your brain develops in a particular way depending on how you interacted with your primary caretaker, namely your mother, but also your father or other primary caretakers. In that first 24 months, your right brain and your left brain mediate very specific but different processes. For instance, today you'll learn from Dr. Schore that your right brain circuitry, that is, specific circuitries on the right-hand side of your brain, are involved in developing a very specific type of resonance with your primary caretaker that transitions from states of calm and quiescence that you both share simultaneously to states that are considered up states of excitement, of enthusiasm, of being wide-eyed. And the transitioning back and forth between those states, as Dr. Schore explains, is critical to our emotional development and how we form attachments later. So if you've heard, for instance, of avoidant attachment or anxious attachment or secure attachment, today you'll understand why those particular attachment styles develop, how they translate from early life to your adolescence, teen years, and adulthood, and in fact how those childhood attachment patterns, which, of course, we can't control for ourselves but we can control for our children, how we can modify them through very specific protocols in order to achieve better relations with both others and with ourselves. It's indeed a very special conversation, and to my knowledge, unlike any other discussions about relationships, neuroscience, or psychology that certainly I have heard before, and I fully expect that for you it will be as well. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein, and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one, and I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high-quality protein source. 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