Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: How to Understand Emotions

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2023

⏱️ 159 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University who is a world expert in the science of emotions. She explains what emotions are and how the brain represents and integrates signals from our body and the environment around us to create our unique emotional states. We discuss the relationship between emotions and language, how our specificity of language impacts our emotional processing, the role of facial expressions in emotions, and how emotions relate to sleep, movement, nutrition and the building and reinforcement of social bonds. We also discuss actionable tools for how to regulate feelings of uncertainty and tools to better understand the emotional states of others. This episode ought to be of interest to anyone curious about the neuroscience and psychology underlying emotions and for those who seek to better understand themselves and relate to others and the world in richer, more adaptive ways. For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Levels: https://levels.link/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Momentous: https://livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett (00:03:01) Sponsors: Eight Sleep & Levels (00:05:46) Core Components of Emotions (00:10:42) Facial Movement & Interpretation, Emotion (00:19:33) Facial Expressions & Emotion, Individualization (00:31:03) Emotion Categories, Culture & Child Development (00:36:53) Sponsor: AG1 (00:37:50) Legal System, ‘Universal’ Emotions & Caution (00:41:07) Language Descriptions, Differences & Emotion (00:48:18) Questions & Assumptions; Language, Emotions & Nervous System (00:53:40) Brain, Uncertainty & Categories (01:02:51) Sponsor: InsideTracker (01:03:57) Brain & Summaries; Emotions as “Multimodal Summaries” (01:14:45) Emotional Granularity, Library Analogy (01:19:40) Brain & Compression, Planning (01:29:04) Labels & Generalization (01:34:29) Movement, Sensation, Prediction & Learning (01:42:44) Feelings of Discomfort & Action (01:50:32) Tool: Feelings of Uncertainty, Emotion, “Affect” (02:01:18) Tool: Experience Dimensions & Attention; Individualization (02:08:36) Affect, Allostasis & Body Budget Analogy (02:15:41) Depression, “Emotional Flu” (02:20:20) Tool: Positively Shift Affect; Alcohol & Drugs; SSRIs (02:27:40) Relationships: Savings or Taxes, Kindness (02:36:50) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Uberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:09.0	I'm Andrew Uberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
0:15.0	My guest today is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett.
0:18.0	Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a distinguished professor of psychology at Northeastern University.
0:23.0	She also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital,
0:27.0	where she is the chief scientific officer of the Center of Law, Brain, and Behavior.
0:32.0	Dr. Barrett is considered one of the top world experts in the study of emotions,
0:37.0	and her laboratory has studied emotions using approaches both from the fields of psychology and neuroscience.
0:43.0	Indeed, today you will learn about the neural circuits and the psychological underpinnings of what we call emotions.
0:49.0	You will learn what emotions truly are and how to interpret different emotional states.
0:54.0	You will also learn how emotions relate to things like motivation, consciousness, and affect.
0:59.0	Affect is a term that refers to a more general state of brain and body that increases or decreases the probability that you will experience certain emotions.
1:08.0	During today's discussion, Dr. Feldman Barrett also teaches us how to regulate our emotions effectively,
1:14.0	as well as how to better interpret the emotional states of others.
1:18.0	You will also learn about the powerful relationship that exists between our emotional states and the movement of our body.
1:24.0	In fact, much of today's discussion is both practical and will be highly informative in terms of the mechanisms underlying emotions,
1:31.0	and it is likely to also be surprising to you in a number of ways.
1:35.0	It certainly was surprising to me.
1:37.0	I've been a close follower of Dr. Feldman Barrett's work over many years now,
1:41.0	and have always founded the tremendously informative, and when I say her work, I mean both her academic published papers,
1:47.0	as well as her public lectures that she's given, and her two fabulous books on emotions in the brain.
1:52.0	The first one entitled How Emotions Are Made, and the second book, which includes information about emotions,
	...

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