Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: How to Understand Emotions | Huberman Lab Podcast

Published October 2023 on YouTube

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: How to Understand Emotions | Huberman Lab Podcast

1. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett

Gain a deep understanding of emotions and their origins in our brain and body. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a renowned expert in the field, discusses the neural circuits and psychological underpinnings of emotions. Learn how to interpret emotional states, regulate emotions effectively, and navigate the powerful relationship between emotions and body movement.+

2. Sponsors: Eight Sleep & Levels

Discover the key to a great night's sleep and waking up feeling refreshed by controlling the temperature of your sleeping environment. Andrew shares insights on the importance of temperature regulation and introduces Eight Sleep, a smart mattress cover that allows you to fall and stay deeply asleep throughout the night.+

3. Core Components of Emotions

Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses the ongoing scientific debate surrounding the definition of emotions and challenges the notion of diagnostic patterns. She highlights the lack of distinct physical markers for each emotion, leaving researchers puzzled about how we experience different emotional states.+

4. Facial Expressions Unveiled

Facial Expressions and Emotions:Explore the connection between facial expressions and emotions as Andrew and Lisa discuss the interpretation of facial movements and their impact on our emotional states. Discover the truth behind the myth and gain insights into the complex relationship between our facial expressions, brain, and body.+

Facial Expressions and Emotional Inferences:Lisa explains that facial expressions are not always indicative of internal states and that our brains make inferences about the emotional meaning of facial movements based on a larger ensemble of signals. Andrew discusses the misconception that simply changing our facial expressions or body positions can directly influence our emotions.+

5. Facial Expressions Debate

Facial Expressions Debate:Explore the ongoing debate among scientists about the universality of facial expressions and their connection to specific emotional states. Lisa shares her journey of challenging long-held beliefs and the limitations she discovered when using facial expressions as stimuli in experiments. Discover why taking historical views, even from renowned figures like Darwin, may not necessarily reflect the truth.+

Debunking Facial Expression Myths:Senior scientists come together to challenge the widely held belief that facial expressions have universal meanings. Through extensive research and collaboration, they uncover the complexity and lack of one-to-one correspondence between specific facial configurations and emotions. Discover the fascinating insights and debates surrounding this topic.+

Facial Expressions: Highly Variable:Lisa and her colleagues explore the variability of facial expressions and challenge the notion of universal emotions. Through extensive research and consensus-building, they reveal that facial expressions are highly variable across cultures and situations, debunking the idea of a single, universal expression for each emotion.+

6. Unraveling Anger

Understanding Anger:Lisa and Andrew discuss how anger is not a static entity, but a dynamic process with highly variable instances. They explore how cultural differences impact the perception and expression of anger, shedding light on the complexity of this emotion.+

The Baby's Smile:Discover the fascinating relationship between a baby's smile and their brain's wiring to the world. Learn how cultural inheritance plays a role in recognizing faces and the importance of early learning in shaping our understanding of happiness.+

7. Sponsor: AG1

Discover AG One, a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that provides all your essential nutrition needs. Andrew shares his personal experience with AG One, highlighting its benefits in improving focus, energy, and sleep. Don't miss out on a special offer to try AG One and receive five free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D.+

8. Debunking Universal Facial Expressions

Lisa explains the serious consequences of believing in universal facial expressions, highlighting a case where a woman was wrongly put on death row based on a police officer's claim. She emphasizes that there are no universal templates and urges us to stop assuming otherwise.+

9. Exploring Complex Emotions

Understanding Complex Emotions:Andrew explores the limitations of language in describing and understanding the complex range of emotions we experience, highlighting the need for additional signals to enhance our emotional understanding.+

Language and Emotion:Discover how language shapes our understanding of emotions as Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses the limitations of English and explores fascinating emotion concepts from different cultures. From the German word for "the experience of someone having a face that deserves a punch" to the Polynesian emotion word for "exuberant aggression in a group," this episode delves into the richness of emotional experiences beyond language barriers.+

10. Challenging Assumptions

Challenging Assumptions:Lisa challenges the assumptions behind questions and discusses the limitations of language in labeling emotional states. She offers a different approach to understanding the brain and emphasizes the importance of considering diverse experiences.+

Challenging Biological Assumptions:Andrew and Lisa challenge common assumptions about drugs and biological signals, highlighting the importance of understanding their true functions and implications.+

11. Brain, Uncertainty & Categories

Understanding the Brain:Lisa Feldman Barrett shares her unique perspective on understanding the brain by starting with the nervous system and exploring its evolution and structure. She emphasizes the importance of anatomy in making discoveries and challenges the notion of the brain as a stimulus-driven organ. Andrew Huberman appreciates returning to the fundamentals and encourages a deeper understanding of the core basics.+

The Brain's Guessing Game:Lisa and Andrew discuss how the brain, trapped in a box, continuously receives signals from the body but has to guess the causes of those signals in order to stay alive. They explore how the brain constructs categories of possible futures and motor plans based on past experiences, and how it selects the right one among them.+

Reducing Uncertainty:Andrew and Lisa discuss how the brain's goal is to reduce uncertainty and the challenges of constantly living in a state of unpredictability. They explore the dynamic nature of the brain's decision-making process and the importance of context in narrowing down possibilities.+

12. Sponsor: InsideTracker

Discover how Inside Tracker's personalized nutrition platform can help you understand your body and meet your health goals through blood analysis, behavioral adjustments, and nutrition protocols.+

13. Decoding Brain Signals

Understanding Brain Signals:Andrew and Lisa discuss how the brain constantly makes distinctions between signals and noise, and how humans cue each other to determine what is worth paying attention to.+

Signals and Emotions:Lisa explains how the brain processes signals and the connection to emotions. She discusses the assembly of features and the dimensionality reduction that occurs in the brain, shedding light on the intricate workings of our emotions.+

Neural Encoding:Andrew and Lisa discuss how the physical world is transformed into neural code through our sensory apparati, and how information is passed along hierarchies in the brain, leading to summaries of summaries.+

Understanding Emotional Labels:Andrew and Lisa discuss how emotions are subjective interpretations and labels, represented by broad bins and multimodal abstractions. They explore how words like anger are summaries of various sensory and motor features, influenced by developmental and cultural experiences. Language is seen as a crude descriptor for the complex neural processes involved in emotions.+

14. Emotions Granularity

Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses the concept of emotions granularity, emphasizing that it is a process rather than a fixed thing. She explains how the brain constructs categories and the importance of finding a balance between fine-grained and broad categories. Andrew Huberman reflects on the implications of emotional intelligence and the plasticity of the brain's emotional system.+

15. Brain & Compression, Planning

The Emojiization of Human Responses:Andrew and Lisa discuss how our species is moving towards reducing complex human responses to simple emojis, and the potential consequences of this shift. They explore the expansion and contraction of complexity in human culture throughout history, and what predicts these patterns.+

Neural Compression and Guessing:Lisa Feldman Barrett explores the concept of neural compression and how the brain makes guesses to infer details from low-dimensional signals.+

Decoding Neural Decision-Making:Andrew and Lisa delve into the complex process of decision-making in the brain, exploring the range of movements and speeds humans are capable of. They challenge the notion of simple binary choices and discuss how the brain decompresses compressed features to plan actions. From coordinating internal functions to skeletal motor movements, the brain categorizes and creates options for action.+

16. Labels & Generalization

The Power of Words:Lisa explains how our experience of the world is derived from motor plans and how words can effectively communicate a multitude of sensory and motor features with just a few sounds.+

The Power of Words:Lisa and Andrew discuss how words serve as stand-ins for detailed features and how even babies can use words to learn abstract categories. They highlight the importance of shared functions in categorizing objects.+

17. "Emotions in Motion"

Emotions and Movement:Explore the fascinating connection between emotions and movement as Andrew and Lisa discuss how our brain prepares actions before we feel emotions, challenging traditional views in neuroscience and psychology.+

Predictive Brain, Controlled Hallucination:Lisa Feldman Barrett and Andrew Huberman discuss the mind-boggling concept of the brain's predictive nature, where motor plans and sensory predictions shape our experience of the world, leading to controlled hallucinations. They explore the limitations of studying such dynamic neural systems and how individuals may encode and experience emotions differently.+

18. Feelings of Discomfort & Action

Understanding Emotions:Explore the conflicting perspectives on whether we should feel our emotions or use top-down control to manage them. Andrew and Lisa delve into the complexities of understanding and navigating our emotions, offering valuable insights along the way.+

Feeling vs. Expressing:Lisa and Andrew discuss the debate between feeling emotions and expressing them, highlighting the importance of flexibility and the role of the brain in experiencing sensations. They challenge the idea that emotions are solely felt in the body and emphasize the need to understand individual goals in determining whether to use words or physical outlets for emotional release.+

Embracing Discomfort:Lisa and Andrew discuss the importance of embracing discomfort and how it can be instructive in our lives. They explore the idea that feeling discomfort is not always a sign that something is wrong, but rather an opportunity for growth and healing.+

19. Embracing Arousal

Feeling and Emotion Interchange:Lisa explains how our brains regulate our bodies and how our bodies send sensory signals back to the brain. She emphasizes that our nervous systems aren't wired to experience these sensory changes in detail, instead creating a low dimensional summary of our body's state. These feelings are features of consciousness, not emotion.+

Understanding Emotional Experience:Lisa explains that our experience of negative emotions is not solely caused by external factors, but also influenced by our own internal state. She discusses how changing our physical state through activities like exercise or shifting our attention can help regulate our emotions. Additionally, she challenges the notion that experiencing physical sensations instead of labeling them as emotions is always negative, highlighting the importance of emotional intelligence.+

Uncertainty and Arousal:Lisa explains how uncertainty can lead to a high level of arousal, which is often mistaken for anxiety. She emphasizes the importance of foraging for information and making split-second decisions in uncertain situations. By reframing our physical sensations, we can train ourselves to experience them as determination rather than anxiety.+

Embracing Arousal:Lisa Feldman Barrett shares a powerful story about her daughter's experience in karate and how it changed her perspective on arousal. She explains how giving meaning to our affective feelings can give us more control over our emotions and turn them into a source of wisdom. Andrew Huberman emphasizes the importance of knowledge itself in understanding and working with our emotions.+

20. Shifting Perception

Shifting Attention, Enhancing Perception:Discover how shifting attention can enhance perception and transform your sensory experience. Learn from the world of painting and neurology as Lisa and Andrew discuss the power of breaking down objects into pieces of light and expanding the dimensionality of our senses.+

Animal Sensory Experience:Andrew Huberman shares the story of a scientist who explored animal sensory experiences, including his own drug use, to better understand human emotion. This exploration allowed him to interact with patients in a more empathetic way and shed light on their experiences. Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses how reading about animals with different sensory surfaces can help us understand the diverse ways people experience the world, fostering empathy and expanding our reality.+

21. Understanding Affect

Understanding Affect:Explore the concept of affect and its impact on our emotions and well-being. Lisa Feldman Barrett explains how our sensory systems and sleep play a crucial role in regulating our emotions and bodily functions. Discover actionable insights to enhance your emotional well-being.+

The Body Budget:Lisa Feldman Barrett explains how the brain regulates the body's metabolic state, using the metaphor of a "body budget." She discusses the impact of social stress on metabolism and how affect is tied to the state of the body.+

22. Depression, “Emotional Flu”

Lisa shares her personal experience with her daughter's depression and how it relates to the concept of body budgeting. She discusses the role of prediction error and the lack of positive anticipation in depression. Lisa also explores the idea of the "emotional flu" and how it can affect our perception of the world.+

23. Shifting Affect & SSRIs

Shifting Affect, Alcohol, and SSRIs:Andrew and Lisa discuss the impact of sleep, movement, and nutrition on shifting affect in positive directions. They delve into the allure of alcohol and drugs of abuse, exploring how they provide temporary relief but come with long-term consequences. Additionally, they touch on the complex effects of SSRIs and the importance of understanding the source of one's budgeting problem when treating it.+

Treatment Resistant Depression:Andrew and Lisa discuss the emerging theory that SSRIs may deplete neural systems that subserve enhanced mood, leading to treatment resistant depression. They also explore the idea that depression is a metabolic problem and emphasize the importance of sleep, exercise, and healthy eating for mental health.+

24. The Power of Relationships

The Power of Relationships:Andrew and Lisa discuss the importance of relationships in regulating our nervous systems, highlighting the impact of positive and negative interactions on our well-being. They explore how we can be caretakers of each other's nervous systems and the reciprocity that comes with being a positive influence in others' lives.+

Synchrony and Narcissism:Discover the fascinating connection between synchrony and relationships, as Lisa Feldman Barrett explains how people synchronize their physical signals when they trust and like each other. Andrew Huberman delves into the topic of narcissism, revealing that narcissists operate from a deficit of pleasure and intense envy, which can leave others feeling taxed and confused. Explore the impact of synchrony on relationships and the role it plays in regulating our nervous systems.+

The Power of Kindness:Lisa discusses the importance of trust in both personal and professional relationships, highlighting how acts of kindness can strengthen bonds and contribute to overall well-being. She emphasizes the underrated value of kindness and the positive impact it can have on individuals and their communities.+

25. Emotions Explored

Dive into the fascinating world of emotions with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett as she shares insights on the psychology and neuroscience behind our feelings. Discover how supplements can enhance sleep, hormone support, and focus, and learn about the Huberman Lab's social media platforms and Neural Network newsletter for even more science-related content.+