0:00

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

0:03

In Anthony Doar's wonderful novel, All the

0:06

Light We Cannot See, a

0:08

radio host poses a question to an

0:10

audience of children. The

0:13

brain is locked in total darkness, he

0:15

says. It floats in

0:17

a clear liquid inside the skull, never

0:19

in the light. And yet the

0:21

world it constructs in the mind is full of

0:24

light. It brims with

0:26

color and movement. So

0:28

how, children, does the brain, which lives without

0:30

a spark of light, build

0:33

for us a world full of light?

0:37

It's not just about light, of course. The

0:39

world inside our heads is full of sound,

0:42

movement and sensation. It

0:46

is suffused with feelings and emotion.

0:50

Imagine for a moment that your brain was

0:52

a person locked inside your head. How

0:54

does this person create a world so rich, so

0:57

varied and so beautiful, when

0:59

she is permanently trapped within the cage of

1:02

your skull? Most

1:04

of us have already answered. The

1:06

brain has many messengers that bring

1:09

it information. Signals stream

1:11

in from our eyes and ears and

1:13

skin. The brain takes in all

1:15

these signals, and like a film

1:17

editor splicing together a movie, assembles

1:20

our perceptions of the world. But

1:25

in recent years, some scientists have come to

1:27

believe that this is not what

1:29

actually happens. The light we

1:31

see and the sounds we hear are

1:34

not really comprised of signals from the outside world.

1:37

Instead, they are mostly

1:39

creations of the mind itself. When

1:43

I first heard this idea, it made

1:45

little sense to me. But then I

1:48

came by some interesting experiments. For

1:50

example, can you make out what I'm saying

1:52

here? I know, but I

1:54

can't see. I'll plug the plug in in 2015.

2:00

right? Here's what I said. The

2:03

novel, All the Light We Cannot

2:05

See, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015.

2:09

Now, let me play you the same clip as before. If

2:12

you can now make out the

2:14

words, it's not because your mind

2:16

deciphered the audio. You tried

2:23

doing that, and it sounded like gibberish.

2:26

You can do it now, because your

2:28

brain knew what was coming. It

2:30

predicted what it was going to hear. As

2:35

we will explore today, the brain is doing

2:37

this in every domain. What

2:39

you hear, yes, but also

2:41

what you see, what you touch, what

2:43

you smell. This

2:46

week on Hidden Brain, the story of

2:48

a scientist who has spent years studying

2:50

how the brain constructs reality and

2:52

the surprising implications of our ideas

2:55

for our emotional lives. Lisa

3:09

Feldman Barrett grew up in Toronto, Canada.

3:12

It was the late 1960s. Her dad was out

3:15

of the picture, so her mom raised her. Lisa

3:18

would spend every weekend with her

3:20

maternal grandparents. When

3:22

she was five, her mom remarried. Lisa

3:25

vividly remembers something that happened with her new

3:27

stepfather on the day of the wedding. I

3:30

remember his parents were there,

3:32

and I remember his parents saying

3:35

to me, so I think I had met

3:37

them maybe once or twice. I didn't really know them at

3:39

all. I remember my stepgrandmother saying

3:41

to me, well, go over to

3:43

your grandparents and congratulate

3:45

them on this wedding. Now, she's saying

3:48

this to a five-year-old. What does a

3:50

five-year-old know? I remember saying

3:52

to her, why do I have to do that? I

3:54

don't have to go congratulate my Zaydi, or that's what

3:56

I used to call him. It's the Yiddish word for

3:58

grandfather. make

6:00

someone feel guilty for their own

6:02

bad behavior, in which case if

6:04

you're being held responsible for their

6:06

feelings, then you pay

6:09

the price. You

6:11

said a couple of times that

6:13

your stepfather held you accountable for

6:16

your mother's feelings, and you also

6:18

just said that your stepfather might

6:20

hold you accountable for his feelings. Talk

6:23

about that idea for a moment. How did

6:25

he pick up on the sense that you were responsible for

6:27

how they felt? Well, he would

6:29

say it. He would say, you made your mother

6:32

feel embarrassed. You

6:34

embarrassed your mother. You made your mother angry. You

6:36

made your mother sad. For

6:39

example, when I was 12, I lived

6:42

in a Jewish area. My

6:44

family is Jewish. Everyone was

6:46

having bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. I personally wasn't

6:48

because I didn't go to Hebrew school. We

6:51

couldn't afford that. But everyone

6:53

was going to bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. It's

6:55

not crazy like it is now where people are

6:58

spending $100,000 or whatever on these massive

7:01

parties. But there was

7:03

still a party that you had to go to and

7:06

a present that you had to give. You had

7:08

to wear a dress. You needed shoes. I

7:10

didn't have dresses. I didn't have shoes. I

7:12

had one pair of shoes. They

7:15

weren't party shoes. I

7:18

remember I wrote

7:20

a little note to my mother on a

7:22

piece of paper and I decorated it with

7:26

– I like to draw, so I

7:28

decorated it with all sorts of flowers

7:30

and balloons and party things. I

7:32

said, can I have a pair of party shoes? I

7:35

slipped it under the door when she was in the

7:37

bathroom. I honestly don't

7:39

think that my mother would say to my

7:41

stepfather, she made me feel this way. I'm

7:45

guessing, but knowing my mother the

7:47

way that I do, I would expect that she

7:49

would say, I feel

7:51

bad that we don't have the money to buy

7:54

her a pair of shoes. Let's

7:59

just say that I didn't go to a party. bar

8:01

mitzvahs or bar mitzvahs for like a month, which

8:04

made me very unpopular because

8:06

I had already RSVP'd that I

8:08

was going to these parties and then at

8:10

the last minute sort of had to cancel

8:12

because I was grounded. Wait, so

8:15

your stepfather grounded you because you sent this note

8:17

to your mother? Yeah, like I slipped

8:19

it under the door asking, can

8:21

I please have a pair of party shoes? Yeah.

8:25

The response was, you know,

8:27

probably came like a day later and

8:31

it was swift and intense. As

8:37

you can tell, Lisa had a strained

8:39

relationship with her stepfather. She

8:41

was also something of an outlier in her family.

8:44

She was the first to go to college and then

8:46

to graduate school. But

8:48

our story today is not about

8:50

parent-child relationships or even about

8:53

the particulars of Lisa's own childhood. The

8:56

reason these stories are relevant to our episode today

8:58

is because they illustrate an idea that

9:01

is ubiquitous in all of our lives.

9:04

You probably had times in your own

9:06

life when someone told you that you

9:08

made them feel sad or angry or

9:10

happy, that you were the cause

9:12

of their emotions, that you were responsible

9:14

for how they feel. You

9:17

have surely felt this way about others. Someone

9:19

cuts you off in traffic and you say that

9:21

the other driver made you upset. A

9:24

friend brings over some food when you are

9:26

sick and you say your friend has comforted

9:28

you. We say that a winning

9:30

sports team has cheered us up and

9:32

that a losing sports team has brought us down.

9:37

It certainly feels as though our minds

9:39

are taking in signals from the outside

9:41

world and assembling our internal world, that

9:45

our emotions are caused by the things that

9:47

happen to us. But

9:50

as Lisa went on to become a psychologist

9:53

and neuroscientist, she was to

9:55

discover that our feelings are not, in

9:57

fact, responses to the world. They

10:00

are really predictions about the

10:02

world. She began

10:04

to ask herself a question. What

10:06

happens if we change

10:08

those predictions? You're

10:18

listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar

10:20

Vedanta. When

10:30

high school students start to learn to conduct experiments, their

10:34

teachers usually tell them to start by repeating

10:36

or replicating famous experiments from the past. The

10:40

physicist Isaac Newton, for example, discovered a

10:43

long time ago that heavier objects

10:45

do not fall faster than

10:47

lighter objects. All objects

10:49

on Earth experience gravity, and

10:52

this gravitational wave is not a problem. All

10:55

objects on Earth experience gravity, and

10:58

this gravitational force is constant regardless

11:00

of whether the object is heavy

11:03

or light. When

11:05

I was in high school, I remember teachers

11:08

showing us how to replicate Newton's experiment using

11:10

two balls of different weight that roll

11:13

down in incline. When

11:15

Lisa Feldman Barrett started working on her PhD,

11:18

she decided to replicate some famous experiments.

11:22

She was planning to become a clinician and

11:24

help people suffering with anxiety and depression, but

11:26

she also enjoyed doing research. The

11:29

theory that I was working with was

11:31

something called self-discrepancy theory. There were a

11:34

set of very simple experiments

11:36

that had been published where

11:38

people were just asked to

11:41

list the attributes or properties of

11:43

who they thought they were. You

11:46

know, I'm a nice person. I'm an honest person. I'm

11:49

a complex person. I'm

11:51

a whatever. And then the

11:53

features of who their ideal self.

11:56

And then you can compute the similarity

11:58

or... dissimilarity and

12:00

then you can also ask

12:03

people how they feel. The

12:05

idea was that if there were mismatches

12:07

between how people described themselves and who

12:09

they wanted to be, this

12:11

would make people sad. As part

12:13

of the experiment, Lisa had to ask people

12:15

how they felt and carefully

12:17

distinguish emotions like sadness from

12:20

emotions like anxiety. That's

12:22

what I did in the first couple of studies where

12:24

I was asking people in different ways

12:26

or I was attempting to measure

12:29

emotion in different ways, but

12:32

I was never able to replicate

12:34

those experiments. Lisa's

12:38

volunteers seemed to have a hard time

12:40

accurately classifying how they felt. As

12:43

a graduate student, Lisa figured she had

12:45

not run the experiment properly. She

12:47

tried again and again and

12:50

again. Well, I thought, well, I must

12:52

be doing something wrong. Maybe

12:54

I'm not sampling properly or

12:57

maybe I'm sampling people at the

12:59

wrong time of the semester. After

13:05

she failed for the eighth time, Lisa said,

13:08

okay, I am clearly missing something here.

13:11

What am I not getting? I went

13:13

back and I looked at the eight experiments

13:15

that had failed and I realized, oh, actually,

13:19

the reason why they're failing

13:21

was that when people are reporting

13:24

how they feel, how much sadness

13:26

do you feel? How hopeless do

13:28

you feel? How depressed do

13:30

you feel? You're basically giving

13:32

them a set of words and you're asking

13:34

them to describe their feelings. You

13:38

can do the same thing with anxiety. How anxious do

13:40

you feel? How jittery do you feel? How

13:43

fearful do you feel? And so on and so forth. What

13:46

I noticed was that when people were

13:50

reporting that they were feeling

13:52

intense sadness, they were also

13:55

reporting that they were feeling

13:57

intense anxiety. When people

13:59

reported that they were feeling calm,

14:02

they were also reporting that they were

14:04

feeling happy. So what was

14:06

happening here in these eight

14:08

studies is that people were reporting

14:11

that they felt both sad

14:13

and anxious or that they felt neither

14:15

of those emotions, that they felt calm

14:18

and happy. Basically,

14:20

people were using sadness

14:23

and anxiety as synonyms for I

14:25

feel like crap. And

14:29

this was happening across eight different

14:31

studies. And so I thought, well,

14:33

that's the problem. The

14:35

problem is that people

14:38

are not reporting accurately

14:40

how they're feeling. This

14:43

was why the results of the studies were muddled.

14:46

If people reported feeling sad when they

14:48

really should have said they were feeling

14:50

anxious or vice versa, the

14:52

researchers wouldn't be able to

14:54

tell how mismatches between people's

14:56

ideal cells and actual cells

14:58

produce sadness. If I

15:00

want to measure emotion, I've got to find a way to measure

15:03

how they actually feel. Then

15:07

I'll be able to properly test

15:09

the hypothesis of the self-discrepancy hypothesis.

15:12

And maybe I might also figure

15:14

out why is it that people

15:16

are having trouble separating

15:18

anxiety and sadness? Because

15:21

everyone knows that anxiety and

15:24

depression, sadness and fear, that

15:26

these are different emotion categories.

15:31

And I became just captivated

15:34

and intrigued by this new problem

15:36

that I had encountered. In her

15:38

third year of graduate school,

15:40

Lisa experienced something in her

15:42

personal life that

15:46

matched the experience of her volunteers. There

15:50

was someone at the university who, you know, kept

15:52

asking me out for college. Coffee

16:00

or for dinner on.

16:03

I. Just didn't find this person very

16:06

appealing I guess and I wasn't

16:08

really that interested in I just

16:10

ignored his. His advances

16:12

so to speak, His interest, but

16:14

he was persistent, you know? And

16:17

so finally I saw it. All

16:19

right well I'm just gonna go out

16:21

with him for coffee. was his have

16:24

coffee and then you know. I'll

16:26

tell him I don't wanna start a relationship.

16:29

So we went out for coffee. And

16:31

we went to see how this place very

16:34

close by the university that all the graduate

16:36

students used to go to and were sitting

16:38

there having coffee. In this

16:40

wonderful little Mediterranean restaurant and I

16:43

started noticing that. Like my

16:45

cheeks or flies like I'm flushing. And.

16:47

I'm I'm a little warm. And

16:49

my heart was pounding a little harder

16:51

than usual and I was having a

16:54

little trouble concentrating. And that

16:56

thought. Like attracted

16:58

to this that have I done wrong

17:00

all this time? Maybe is more interesting

17:02

than I thought? Maybe I'm. Not

17:05

that. Bad. Looking and

17:07

I guess is sort of more interesting than

17:09

slut I thought before and gee maybe I

17:11

was wrong and he of by the end

17:13

of the conversation were there for like two

17:15

hours and I'm you know he owsley can

17:17

we? Can we see each other again? Can

17:19

we? Can we have dinner and I'm like

17:21

yes sir let's have dinner You know for

17:23

sure let's. Let's then. I will

17:25

start to walk back to the place

17:27

where I'm living and I'm thinking to

17:30

myself okay so maybe there's something here

17:32

and you know he said and done

17:34

believe your first impressions. A

17:38

fumble for my keys as I always

17:40

do, I unlock the door. And

17:43

then a wave. Of

17:46

intense. Nausea just flares

17:48

up. I dropped my stuff on

17:50

the floor, slammed the door, run

17:53

to the bathroom. And

17:55

less to say. Spend some

17:57

time. You know whether they say praying

17:59

to the. Or when god and then was in

18:01

bad for a. Week with the flu. Lisa

18:06

had thought was romantic attraction

18:08

was not in fact romantic

18:10

attraction. She had just

18:13

been feeling sick. How

18:15

could anyone mix up these two very different

18:17

things? If anything, this was

18:19

an extreme form of what Lisa

18:22

volunteers had been doing in her

18:24

eight failed experiments. They had been

18:26

mixing up anxiety and depression or

18:28

calmness and happiness. She was mixing

18:30

of the signals of a viral

18:32

infection and romantic attraction. But

18:35

Lisa fail to draw the right

18:38

implications from what had happened. She

18:40

was still certain that people salad

18:42

happy or sad or anxious or

18:44

angry. They just had a hard

18:46

time articulating what they felt. Her

18:48

job as a scientist was to

18:51

find an objective way to identify

18:53

emotions. It took

18:55

Lisa a long time and well after

18:57

she had graduated to realize her data

18:59

had been telling her a different story.

19:02

For. A very long time. It

19:04

took me probably. Systematically.

19:07

About. Ten. Years maybe

19:09

more to come to the conclusion

19:12

that there are no indicators. Objective

19:14

indicators for. An emotion or

19:16

motion. Words like anger isn't a saying.

19:18

It's anger isn't a thing. It's actually

19:21

a. A category

19:23

of highly variable instances,

19:25

sometimes. When. You're angry.

19:27

You shout. Sometimes when you're angry,

19:30

you last. Sometimes when you're angry,

19:32

you cry. Sometimes. When

19:34

you're angry, you sit silently and

19:36

plot the demise of your enemy

19:39

in a sometimes see scowl. About

19:41

half the time when people scowl,

19:44

they're not angry. Dot. Significant

19:46

compared to chance. But it also means

19:48

that fifty percent of the time if

19:50

you assume that when someone is scowling,

19:52

they're angry, you're going be wrong. anger

19:55

or sadness or fear whatever will leave

19:58

or for to an emotion for really

20:00

referring to an instance of a category.

20:03

That's the first thing to understand. So

20:06

when you look at someone and they're scowling,

20:08

it could be that the person is angry.

20:10

It could be that somebody just told them

20:12

a really bad joke. It could

20:14

be that they're concentrating really hard. It

20:17

could be that they're experiencing a bad bout

20:19

of gas. Any

20:22

of those things and also other states could

20:25

have produced that

20:27

scowl on their face. And you

20:29

have to make a guess based

20:31

on your past experiences about

20:35

what that scowl means in this context.

20:38

Lisa ran an experiment that showed

20:41

our ability to read emotions is

20:43

heavily dependent on the context. Just

20:46

like that garbled sentence at the top of the

20:48

episode that made sense once you knew what I

20:50

was saying, it is the

20:52

context that helps us predict the emotions

20:54

of others. In

20:56

the study, Lisa and her colleagues

20:59

had an actor portray the emotion

21:01

in various scenarios. One

21:03

scenario asked people to imagine that a

21:05

coworker had caught them stealing and

21:07

was going to tell the boss. The

21:09

actor tried to depict the facial expression

21:11

of someone trapped in that difficult situation.

21:15

Lisa then brought in volunteers and showed them

21:17

the photos of the actor. She

21:20

asked the volunteers to guess what emotion

21:22

the actor was portraying. For

21:24

another group of volunteers, she provided the

21:26

scenario the actor was trying to portray

21:28

and asked the volunteers to guess the

21:30

emotions of people caught up in that

21:32

scenario. A third group

21:34

of volunteers got both the scenario and the

21:37

photos of the actor. We

21:39

compare people who rate the

21:41

face alone to the

21:43

people who rated the face in the context,

21:46

right? To people who

21:48

rate the context alone. So we can

21:51

ask the question, what is driving people's

21:53

perceptions? Is it the expression

21:55

on the face? Is it

21:57

the context? Or is it some combination? And

22:00

the answer is it's mostly the context.

22:03

The context always trumps the

22:05

actual facial movements. When

22:08

you're asking the question about how is

22:10

a perceiver experiencing a person's face, there's

22:13

no inherent meaning in the face. The

22:15

signals in the face are

22:18

not inherently meaningful as emotion.

22:20

The context is

22:23

creating the meaning, basically,

22:25

for what those facial

22:27

movements mean. Lisa

22:35

had an epiphany. If the

22:37

context is what helps us read the emotions of

22:39

others, is it possible that

22:41

it is the context that also shapes

22:43

how we read our own emotions? She

22:47

thought back to the story of her bad date. When

22:49

she thought about it again, she realized

22:51

that the interpretation of her emotion completely

22:54

depended on the context. The

22:57

more accurate way that I would

23:00

describe what happened is that my

23:03

brain made sense of those

23:06

physical signals coming from the

23:08

body as attraction. You

23:11

know, your brain is trapped

23:14

inside a dark silent box called

23:17

your skull, and it's

23:19

receiving signals from your body. You

23:22

have sensory surfaces all over your

23:24

body in your retina, in each

23:26

eye, the cochlea in each ear,

23:28

your skin. You have

23:30

sensory surfaces inside your body

23:32

for glucose, for temperature.

23:36

Your brain is constantly receiving sensory

23:38

signals from the sensory surfaces of

23:40

your body that inform the brain

23:43

of the changes in the body and in the

23:45

world. But the brain doesn't know the causes. It

23:47

only knows the signals themselves, which

23:50

are the outcomes. And this is

23:52

what philosophers call an inverse problem.

23:54

So your brain is constantly having to

23:56

solve an inverse problem. It

23:58

has to guess. At

24:00

the meaning. Of

24:02

that the causes of those signals.

24:05

And. Even when your brain guess

24:07

is wrong. Those guess has

24:10

become your experience basically. So.

24:12

What my brain did in that. During.

24:14

That coffee was. Take these

24:17

sensory signals. Which. Were.

24:19

Being caused by. You. Know

24:21

a pathogen assistant biologically speaking in

24:24

in my body but my brain

24:26

didn't know about that pathogen, it

24:28

just knew the outcomes of the

24:31

pathogen. Which is this which were

24:33

the signals. Pro. I

24:35

think authentically I sounds romantic attraction

24:38

in that moment. It's

24:40

just that the biological cause. With.

24:42

Different than what it made might have

24:45

been at other times. That's how I

24:47

would understand what happened now. When

24:51

you went on that date with your

24:53

fellow graduate student, you had previously experiences

24:55

of what it's like to do, you

24:57

know, have coffee with someone you're attracted

25:00

to. You sort of knew what your.

25:03

Face being flushed could mean and you

25:05

knew what a flutter in your heart

25:07

could mean. And in some ways as

25:09

you're sitting there having coffee with this

25:11

other person, your brain in some ways

25:13

is saying where have these things happen

25:15

to me before? What is the context

25:17

that makes sense here and your brain

25:19

is trying to make sense of what

25:21

these signals coming in Or Utrecht Having.

25:24

Yes, Exactly. That's exactly right, and

25:26

you know each guess each predicts

25:28

in. Isn't. Wade Equally right,

25:31

there is a prior probability there's

25:33

some. Increased chance

25:35

that one. Predictive.

25:39

Contacts. To one one.

25:41

Story. Is is gonna be more

25:43

likely than. Than

25:45

another right answer your brain is is

25:48

weighing those. Yeah and if you hadn't gone

25:50

on the date that day, if your face had

25:52

just felt slashed and your heart felt like it

25:54

was fluttering and your and you felt a little

25:57

uncomfortable and you were just happened to be in

25:59

your lab. You wouldn't have draw the

26:01

conclusion. Oh, I'm attracted to someone you might well

26:03

have. Draw the conclusion. Something's wrong. I think I

26:05

might be feeling. yeah. Exactly exactly. That's

26:08

exactly right. If I had been out

26:10

for a run and I was feeling

26:12

slashed, I would experience it. As you

26:14

know, fatigue and that I need to

26:16

you know, have a have a glass

26:18

of water or a chocolate muffin. I

26:20

don't know, but you know that such.

26:22

There are other stories that my a

26:24

brain sort of told and I'll just

26:26

say that to me. What the evidence

26:28

suggests is the following: that the motions

26:30

aren't built into your brain. They're

26:33

built by your brain in the

26:35

moment. As needed.

26:38

And. That. Specificity

26:40

or granularity. With.

26:43

Which an emotion is filled

26:45

depends on. What

26:47

past experiences your brain is

26:50

bringing to bear. To.

26:52

Project and make sense of

26:54

the incoming sensory signals. From.

26:57

The body. And from

26:59

the world. Your

27:05

feelings turn out to be predictions about

27:07

the world, not reactions to it, The

27:10

always our brains prepare us for

27:12

action. When you hear footsteps

27:14

coming up quickly behind you in a dark

27:16

alley, your brain is making a prediction that

27:19

you might need to run away. And

27:21

you feel fear. When your

27:23

child cuddles up next to you on

27:25

the couch, your brain predicts he will

27:27

experience warmth and love. And you

27:29

reach out to give your try to have. Most

27:32

of the time, of course our emotions

27:35

don't see like predictions, but there are

27:37

times when we can actually see the

27:39

predictive machinery and action. Whoa.

27:43

Let's say you hear a loud bang. What

27:45

could that loud bang be? You.

27:47

Could be a firecracker? It could be a car

27:49

backfiring. It could be a gunshot. This to be

27:51

any number of different things. exactly and

27:54

what do you do when

27:56

it's a firecracker versus a

27:59

car backfiring versus a

28:01

gunshot, you do very different things. So

28:04

when a brain asks a question, it's a

28:06

question of what do I need to

28:08

do next to keep

28:10

myself alive? That's the question

28:12

that the brain is always asking, what do I have

28:14

to do? But the

28:17

interesting thing here is that for

28:19

the most part, brains are not reacting

28:22

to the world. The brain

28:24

doesn't hear a sound and then say, what is that?

28:27

What the brain is doing is

28:29

predicting. It's predicting all

28:32

the time what actions

28:34

will be required in the next instance and

28:37

what sensory signals will be

28:39

arriving in the next

28:42

instant. And then it compares

28:44

those predictions to

28:46

the incoming sense data. So

28:49

the sensory signals from the body, from

28:52

your eyes and your ears and your

28:54

skin and your nose and all the

28:57

surfaces inside your body are not

28:59

stimuli. They're signals

29:01

that either confirm predictions or

29:04

they change them. You

29:07

know, I was in Orlando,

29:10

Florida some time ago and I

29:12

was sitting in my hotel room

29:14

in the evening and

29:16

I heard some booms, loud noises.

29:20

And for a minute I was like, what

29:22

are those noises? What could they be? And

29:25

then I remembered of course that I was

29:27

at a resort in Disney World, I was

29:29

there giving a talk and I said, it's

29:31

Disney World, so it's evening and every day

29:33

at the end of the day, Disney

29:35

World celebrates the end of the day with the fireworks

29:38

display. So I rushed to the window, threw open the

29:40

blinds and got to watch the fireworks for

29:42

a little while. But this process where you

29:44

hear the booms, you're trying to figure out

29:46

what it is, you're trying to make sense,

29:49

I'm taking into account the fact that I'm

29:51

in Orlando, I'm at Disney World, that changes

29:53

the meaning of the booms that I'm hearing

29:55

and my brain essentially has made a prediction

29:57

of saying These booms are

29:59

probably. The Not someone opening fire on new.

30:01

These booms are fireworks and you should rush

30:04

to the window to get a glimpse of

30:06

the. Exactly an insect

30:08

if you read reports of

30:10

people who have actually been

30:13

in situations where there is

30:15

gunfire. At. First.

30:17

They. Don't know what's happening. They

30:19

can't tell. Necessarily.

30:22

That they're that what they're hearing is a

30:24

gun. And then when they realize it's a

30:26

gun, They. Can't tell necessarily if

30:28

it's friend or foe. It's.

30:31

Not a situation that we're infrequently because

30:33

most of the time were not sitting

30:35

around wondering. what is that flash of

30:37

light? What is that chemical change? What

30:40

is that? You know? most of the

30:42

time our brains are predicting pretty well.

30:44

I'm but there are these moments where

30:46

you know a brain makes itself aware

30:48

of having to guess. Most

30:53

of the time or predictions don't

30:56

see like predictions. When

30:58

I reach for the mug on the desk in

31:00

front of me, it feels as though I'm looking

31:02

at a mug and directing my fingers to grasp

31:04

the handle. But what is

31:07

really happening is that I have reached

31:09

for my month so many hundreds of

31:11

times that my brain can precisely predict

31:13

the size, date, and location of the

31:15

month. It can predict how I

31:17

was raised them up to my lips and what my

31:20

t is going to Tesla? It's

31:22

still uses visual signals from my eyes,

31:24

tactile signals from my fingers, and a

31:26

taste signals from my tongue. But.

31:29

Only to fine tune it's predictions. If

31:32

I have forgotten to add sugar to my

31:34

T, my taste buds will inform my brain

31:36

that it's prediction of the taste to the

31:38

T was off. It would

31:40

make me at some sugar. Why

31:42

the World. Is predicting instead of simply painting

31:45

a picture of the world from the signals

31:47

coming into the brain. since

31:50

most of what most of us

31:52

to most to the time in

31:54

was things we have done before

31:56

lisa says he would be metabolic

31:58

li inefficient due process everything as

32:00

if it were happening for the first time. The

32:02

most effective way to run a system is

32:05

to predict the state of the system

32:07

and correct when necessary. It's not to

32:11

wait and react to

32:13

things. Reaction is more

32:15

expensive metabolically than prediction.

32:18

And a major selection pressure on

32:21

a species, but also on an

32:24

individual, like an individual's ability, for

32:26

example, to remain healthy and to

32:28

be able to reproduce, pass

32:31

its genes on to the next

32:33

generation is metabolic fitness, metabolic efficiency.

32:35

This is a, you know,

32:37

in psychology, we don't experience every hug

32:40

we give, every emotion we

32:42

experience, every thought we have, you know,

32:44

every insult we bear. We don't

32:46

experience these things in metabolic terms.

32:49

We experience them in psychological terms, but

32:51

there's always a metabolic cost because

32:54

there's always electrical and chemical

32:56

signaling going on underneath the

32:58

hood. And it turns

33:01

out that the metabolic cost of

33:03

signaling is a

33:05

major, major concern that

33:08

any organism system has to

33:10

deal with. When

33:12

I'm in the hotel room and I hear a loud

33:14

bang, my brain quickly asks itself

33:17

a few questions. Are these

33:19

booms taking place in a war zone or

33:21

a holiday resort? Second, it

33:24

asks, where have I seen or

33:26

heard this before? Third,

33:28

and perhaps most important, it asks,

33:31

what do I need to do? So

33:33

the brain is basically creating

33:35

prediction signals that are

33:38

fundamentally, fundamentally they start

33:41

not as your experience of the

33:44

world, but as your actions in

33:46

the world. So your every prediction

33:48

signal starts as a plan

33:51

for regulating the body. And

33:54

then the signals, you know, come in

33:56

that either confirm those predictions

33:59

or... wreaking

36:00

in pleasure. It was a

36:02

joy to behold. First

36:05

of all, it demonstrates that prediction

36:07

signals are not these abstract things.

36:11

They are the brain changing the

36:13

firing of its own neurons to

36:15

begin to construct an

36:17

experience before all

36:20

the information is in from the environment.

36:23

I mean, I have to tell you that

36:25

I knew what I was doing, and as

36:27

I was pouring the grape juice into the

36:29

urine cups, I'm telling you it smelled like

36:31

pee. Like, it just, there was a whiff

36:33

of pee that I could

36:35

smell. And basically, your brain

36:37

is predicting, and

36:40

those predictions are real

36:42

signals that construct

36:45

sensory experience. When

36:54

we come back, how Lisa's research can help all

36:56

of us take back control of

36:59

our emotions. You're listening to

37:01

Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantan. This

37:18

is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantan. Psychologist

37:21

and neuroscientist, Lisa Feldman Barrett is

37:23

the author of the book, How

37:26

Emotions Are Made, The

37:28

Secret Life of the Brain. In

37:30

it, she makes the case that emotions

37:32

are constructed by the brain as it

37:35

sits inside the cage of the skull

37:37

and tries to guess the meaning of

37:39

the electrical signals flooding in from the

37:41

eyes and ears and skin. But

37:44

if emotions are predictions that are designed

37:46

to guide our behavior, Lisa

37:48

says we can exercise more control

37:50

over those predictions than we realize.

38:00

bad moods were really predictions and

38:02

that she could choose to make different

38:04

predictions. When it came to

38:06

fighting a tantrum, that involved making a

38:08

new prediction about a cranky

38:11

fairy. I wanted to give

38:13

her other options for how to experience this

38:15

mood. So I

38:17

invented the cranky fairy. When

38:22

she would start to feel cranky or crabby, it

38:25

meant that the cranky fairy was coming to

38:27

visit. And then whenever she would

38:30

feel the cranky

38:32

fairy preparing to make a visit,

38:34

we gave her a special

38:36

chair, an Elmo chair, a chair

38:38

that was like a little Elmo

38:40

character from Sesame Street, and

38:43

that she could go to and sit in the

38:45

chair when the cranky fairy

38:47

was visiting and sort of

38:49

vanquished the cranky fairy from her life

38:52

for that day. And

38:56

over time, what happened was she

38:58

would actually march herself to

39:01

the chair when she felt like she was

39:03

going to lose control and have a tantrum.

39:05

And she would sit in that chair. And

39:09

she might look at a book or she

39:11

might play with some plastic animals. But

39:14

basically, she was teaching herself

39:16

how to regulate her

39:19

own behavior. And

39:21

so these stories wove together to give

39:25

her options, other options than

39:27

just making emotions, negative

39:29

emotions out of the sensations that she

39:32

was experiencing. But

39:34

there's a larger lesson in this for all

39:36

of us, not just for two-year-olds, which is

39:38

that when we experience emotions, those

39:40

emotions in some ways, as you're pointing out,

39:43

are predictions about what the world

39:45

is like, what we should be feeling, how we

39:47

should be responding. And

39:49

in exactly the same way that you taught your

39:52

daughter to, in some ways, create a different social

39:54

reality, we have some control over

39:56

our emotions in ways that many of us might

39:58

not realize. And

40:00

you know, none of us have as

40:02

much control as we would like and

40:05

gaining control is a little harder than anyone might

40:07

want But if a three-year-old can do

40:09

it then anybody

40:11

can do it and the point

40:14

here is that we created a context

40:16

for her to Rewire

40:18

her brain in a sense, right? She

40:20

she could take advantage

40:23

of the situation to give herself

40:25

new Experiences that

40:27

the brain would learn so that her

40:29

brain would predict later in a different

40:32

way. So at first She

40:35

would sit in the chair after she had a

40:37

tantrum and then she would sit in the chair,

40:39

you know Right before she was having a tantrum

40:41

and then she might go sit in the chair

40:44

You know even when a you know,

40:46

the situation might in 10 or 15

40:48

minutes prompt a tantrum. She was

40:50

able to Practice this

40:53

skill and it was hard

40:55

at first, but it's just like driving basically.

40:57

It's hard at first It takes a lot

40:59

of energy. It's an investment in being a

41:01

better you in the future There's

41:04

another important insight that you are raising

41:07

here Lisa Which is that when we

41:09

experience emotions if we start to

41:11

see them as predictions about the world One

41:14

thing we might do is instead of simply following

41:16

our emotions. We might actually be curious about

41:18

them We say what is causing me to

41:20

feel this way? What are the factors that

41:22

might be driving this? So in other words,

41:24

you're sitting across someone at a coffee shop

41:26

and your face feels flushed Instead

41:28

of automatically saying I'm attracted to this person. You

41:30

could say what might be the different reasons my

41:33

face is flushed exactly

41:35

and curiosity

41:38

is really I think Underrated

41:41

and undervalued in our culture

41:43

particularly at this particular moment

41:45

in time So this

41:48

is something that works when you

41:50

are Really even

41:52

in the throes of great

41:54

difficulty. You can become curious

41:57

instead of becoming

42:00

confident that you know

42:02

what the cause is of

42:04

a set of sensations. So

42:06

a perfect example of this was when my

42:09

daughter was 12, she was

42:11

testing for her black belt in karate. She

42:14

was barely five feet tall and she was

42:16

going to have to spar, that is fight,

42:19

with these like six foot hulking

42:22

adolescent boys in

42:24

order to get her black belt. And

42:27

her sensei, who was this

42:29

tense degree black belt, this guy could break

42:31

a board by looking at it, you know,

42:33

sort of saunters up to her and he

42:36

crosses his arms and he says, get

42:39

your butterflies flying in formation. And

42:43

I thought that is brilliant

42:45

because he's not saying be

42:48

calm because she needs that arousal in

42:50

order to perform, in order to do

42:52

the test. But he gave her a

42:54

different meaning for it and therefore she

42:57

had a different set of actions that were available to

42:59

her. You

43:02

make the point in the book that

43:04

one of the things the brain does

43:06

is that it is very carefully calibrating

43:08

how much energy it's using and making

43:11

predictions about how much energy it needs.

43:13

And many of our mood states, in

43:15

fact, are the brain's predictions about what

43:17

is coming and how much it has

43:19

by way of stored energy. What

43:22

are the implications here for ordinary people,

43:24

Lisa, with this idea, especially when it

43:26

comes to things like food and exercise

43:28

and sleep? You know, when we think

43:30

about our well-being, what does your

43:32

science say about those things that everyone

43:34

struggles with? Evolution

43:37

tells us very clearly that the brain's

43:39

most important job is coordinating

43:42

and regulating the body in

43:45

the most metabolically efficient way. And

43:47

you put it beautifully, that the brain

43:49

is always attempting to predict

43:53

what its energy needs will be in

43:56

the next moment because

43:58

that's the most... efficient way to run

44:01

a body. Brains regulate

44:03

the body, the energetic

44:05

needs of the body, by anticipating those needs

44:07

and attempting to meet those needs before they

44:09

arise. The metaphor that

44:12

I often use for the brain's regulation of

44:14

the body is that the brain is running

44:16

a budget for the body. So the technical

44:19

term for the predictive regulation

44:21

of the body is allostasis. But the

44:23

metaphor is body budgeting. Your brain is

44:25

running a budget for your body. It's

44:28

not budgeting money, it's budgeting glucose and

44:30

salt and oxygen and so on. Depression

44:32

is like a

44:34

bankrupt body budget. It's

44:37

basically your brain is

44:39

attempting to reduce its

44:42

costs. And in doing

44:44

this, it will

44:46

create fatigue, which will lead

44:48

you to move less. So that's a reduction

44:51

in cost. The brain is like

44:53

trapped in its predictions.

44:55

It's not going to update. It's

44:58

not going to learn from prediction error

45:00

because learning is metabolically expensive.

45:03

So even if there are pleasant

45:06

things, like things in the world that

45:09

could lead you to experience pleasure, you

45:12

won't pay attention to them and you

45:14

won't learn about them. You won't take

45:16

advantage of them because it's just too

45:18

expensive. So

45:21

basically the brain is trapped

45:23

in these predictions that

45:26

will lead to more

45:28

unpleasant or continuing unpleasant mood.

45:31

So when you feel stressed, it's

45:33

because your brain has predicted that a

45:37

big metabolic outlay is

45:39

going to be necessary in the next

45:41

moment. So

45:44

like when you're being criticized by

45:47

someone or when someone is bullying

45:50

you or when you're having conflicts with

45:52

people and so on. And then

45:54

if you add to that, maybe not

45:56

getting enough sleep or

45:58

maybe not eating healthily. It

48:00

just turns down the dial on

48:04

the intensity of

48:06

your discomfort in a way

48:08

that I find to be really productive. Lisa

48:21

Feldman Barrett is a psychologist at

48:23

Northeastern University. She's the author

48:25

of How Emotions Are Made, The Secret

48:27

Life of the Brain, and

48:29

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. Lisa,

48:32

thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

48:35

It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much. Hidden

48:56

Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our

48:59

audio production team includes Bridget

49:01

McCarthy, Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong,

49:04

Laura Querell, Ryan Katz,

49:06

Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and

49:08

Nick Woodbole. Tara

49:10

Boyle is our executive producer. I'm

49:13

Hidden Brain's executive editor. If

49:21

you enjoy the show and want more of our

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work, please join Hidden Brain Plus, our

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49:29

Hidden Brain Plus is a great way

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to exclusive conversations you won't hear anywhere

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49:40

or by going to apple.co.uk. I'm

49:44

Shankar Vedantam. See you soon. Hidden

49:59

Brain Thank you.