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

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast

where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday

[Music]

life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a

professor of neurobiology and

Opthalmology at Stanford School of

Medicine my guest today is Dr Lisa

Feldman Barrett Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett

is a distinguished professor of

psychology at Northeastern University

she also holds appointments at Harvard

Medical School and Massachusetts General

Hospital where she is the chief

scientific officer of the center of law

brain and behavior Dr Barett is

considered one of the top World experts

in the study of emotions and her

laboratory has studied emotions using

approaches both from the fields of

Psychology and Neuroscience indeed today

you will learn about the neural circuits

and the psychological underpinnings of

what we call emotions you will learn

what emotions truly are and how to

interpret different emotional states you

also learn how emotions relate to things

like motivation Consciousness and affect

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 during today's discussion Dr

Feldman Barrett also teaches us how to

regulate our emotions effectively as

well as how to better interpret the

emotional states of others you'll also

learn about the powerful relationship

that exists between our emotional states

and the movement of our body in fact

much of today's discussion is both

practical and will be highly informative

in terms of the mechanisms underlying

emotions and it is likely to also be

surprising to you in a number of ways it

certainly was surprising to me I've been

a close follower of Dr Feldman Barrett's

work over many years now and have always

found it to be tremendously informative

and when I say her work I mean both her

academic published papers as well as her

public lectures that she's given and her

two fabulous books on emotions in the

brain the first one entitled how

emotions are made and the second book

which includes information about

emotions but extends beyond that

entitled s and a half lessons about the

brain as you'll see from today's

discussion Dr Feldman Barrett is not

only extremely informed about the

neuroscience and psychology of emotion

she's also fabulously good at teaching

us that information in clear terms and

in actionable ways you'll also notice

several times she pushes back on my

questions in some cases even telling me

that my questions are ill posed and I

have to tell you that I was absolutely

delighted that she did that because

you'll see that every time she did that

it was with the clear purpose of putting

more specificity on the question and

thereby more specificity and Clarity on

the answer which of course she delivers

by the end of today's discussion you

will have both a broad and a deep

understanding of what emotions are and

their origins in our brain and body you

will also have many practical tools with

which to better understand and navigate

emotional states and moreover you'll

have many practical Tools in order to

increase your levels of motivation and

better understand your various States of

Consciousness 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

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now for my discussion with Dr Lisa

Feldman Barrett Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett

welcome wow it's my pleasure to be here

I've wanted to talk to you for a very

long

time I'd like to talk about emotions I

think every everyone has a sense somehow

of what an emotion is feeling happy

feeling sad

feeling excited

feeling uh Curious perhaps is even an

emotion I don't know you'll tell us what

are the core components what are the

sort of

macronutrients of a of an emotion uh

because I know there's a debate about

whether or not we should be talking

about emotions versus States but what is

an

emotion we all are familiar with what

one feels like to us but from a

scientific perspective how do you define

an emotion well SCI this is a scientist

debate about this um nobody in the last

150 years has ever been able to agree on

what an emotion is um and I think from

my perspective the interesting but

tricky bit is that anytime you want to

talk about what the basic building

blocks are of emotion none of those

basic building blocks are specific to

emotion so for example there are a group

of scientists who will tell you well an

emotion is a coordinated response where

you have a change in um some physical

state a change in the brain a change in

the physical state um which um leads you

to make a particular facial expression

so you've got physiological changes in

the body changes in the brain changes in

the face or in motor movements

okay but that describes basically every

moment of your life um your face is

always moving in some way if it wasn't

you would look like an avatar basically

so we're we're constantly engaged in in

movements and those movements have to be

coordinated with the physiological

changes in the body because whether

we're whether we're in a state that we

would conventionally call emotion or not

because the physiology is supporting

those it's supporting the you know the

glut glucose and the oxygen and all the

things that you need to make uh

movements of your body and of course all

these movements are being coordinated by

your brain so of course there's a

coordinated set of um features that

doesn't really describe how emotions are

distinct from any other experience that

you have but the the claim was for a

really long time that there would be

diagnostic patterns okay so when

something triggered fear

you would have an increase in heart rate

and you would have um a propensity to

run away or to freeze or um not just to

fall asleep although that is something

animals do when they are faced with a

predator but that's not part of the

western stereotype for fear so that

wasn't what scientists were looking for

and um and also that you would make a a

particular facial expression which was

presumed to be the universal expression

of fear where you widen your eyes and

you get gasp

like um that facial set of facial

movements in other cultures like in

melanesian culture for example is um is

a symbol of threat where you are

threatening someone you are threatening

them with aggression basically is a war

face but in Western cultures that's the

the face that Western scientists

believed was the you know the the

distinctive part of that distinctive

pattern for fear and so the way that

scientists defined emotion for a long

time was these kind of um states where

you'd see this diagnostic Ensemble of

signals and that would mean that anytime

someone showed one of those signals they

may move their face in a particular way

or their heart increased at a particular

time you'd be able to diagnose them as

being in a state of fear as opposed to a

state of anger or sadness or whatever

the empirical evidence um just doesn't

bear that out and so it was kind of a

mystery the mystery is how is it that

you feel angry or sad or happy or you

know full of gratitude or awe how is it

that you experience these moments but

scientists can't find a single set of

physical

markers that correspond with each state

distinctively right that in a way that

you could tell them apart that's a that

was a really big puzzle for a really

long

time I have to ask you about this

perhaps myth perhaps truth about facial

expressions and

emotions because as you were explaining

the core components of

emotions I had to think back to to the

classic textbook images of the different

faces associated with fear with delight

with confusion on and on we we will get

to that and your opinions on that

scientifically informed opinions of

course but there is a bit of a myth that

the emotion system and the facial

expression system run in both directions

for

instance people will say if you smile

it's harder to feel sad or

anxious I can't say that's been my

experience but I very well could be

wrong so we know that when people's

emotional states change their facial

expressions often will change right if

you see someone crying on the street um

versus somebody smiling really big you

we can make some assumptions about what

might be going on at uh internally for

them but put simply is it true that

changing one's facial expression

can direct shifts in the brain and body

perhaps that change our emotional states

if you'll permit me what I would say is

that your question is ill

posed so first of all it presumes that

there's an emotion

system and that there's a facial

expression system now clearly there's a

system for moving facial muscles okay

but a movement is not the same as an

expression a movement is a movement an

expression is an interpretation of the

meaning of a movement not all movements

of the face are

expressions um and this is a you know a

problem it's a problem in science um in

it's often the case uh I think in my

experience in the science of emotion but

elsewhere to that scientists in their

efforts to make their work

um meaningful to people will try to

interpret their findings in in ways that

uh the average person would um find

interesting or the way that a physician

would find interesting or a teacher or

what have you to be able to use this

information but then they forget that

they're actually making an

interpretation and they start to refer

to their observations with the labels of

interpretation so facial movements are

facial movements people move their faces

and that those movements have meaning

but they're not always to express an

internal state in fact one might think

that they're very rarely to um Express

an internal state so I don't know that

there's a facial expression system

either so that's there is certainly like

I said um there there's circuitry for

moving a face but um but what those

movements mean um is highly variable and

so that would be my second point that

where I would say when you see someone

crying on the street you are not looking

only at their face you might be

aware um that you're focusing on their

face that might be the part of the

entire sensory Ensemble that you are

focusing your attention on but your

brain is taking in an entire ensemble of

signals as you know it's taking in not

just the you know movements of the face

that tears or whatever it's taking in

all of the the entire sensory array The

Sounds the smells what's going on inside

your own body your brain is being um

bombarded with signals from from all of

those sources and when it's making an

meaning out of any signal it's doing it

in an ensemble of signals so research

shows that baby's

cries aren't acoustically specific to

when they're tired or hungry or right um

the you can I can show you a video

without context and show you someone

crying and um you might make a judgment

you might think make the stereotypic

judgment in the west oh that person is

sad and then we pan out and really you

know it's a little girl whose dad just

came home from Iraq or something right

so brains are always interpreting faces

in context they're making guesses this

is something that I've talked about

quite a bit that we don't read movements

in people we don't read emotions in

facial Expressions we make inferences

about the emotional meaning of facial

movements and we do it in an ensemble of

other signals the the context uh as you

if you will and that's really what's

what's happening so um do I think that

um that there is feedback from the face

to the brain sure I mean there's

feedback from every muscle but there's

this constant conversation between the

brain and the body um the brain is

sending motor commands the body is you

know has sensory surfaces which are

sending signals back to the brain so if

the face is influencing the brain it's

doing so in a way that's not special it

it's doing it in a way that that works

for all other parts of your body too and

I

guess what I would say this kind of

long-winded answer

but over time your brain has

learned that certain patterns of signal

over

time um recur and so if you're smiling

if your brain is you know telling your

your facial muscles to move in a

particular way that looks like smiling

um it's happening in a larger Ensemble

of signals and then the brain is

predicting what's going to happen next

because it's learned over time

what happens next so probabilistically

so if you think about that as cause then

sure but it's not as it's not this

simplistic kind of idea that an emotion

is triggered um uh it

causes facial muscles to move in a

particular way and therefore if you just

pose your face in in those in that

particular Arrangement it that will

somehow feed back to the emotion system

and change that system because there are

no there is no emotion system in your

brain and the the causation just isn't

that it's not that simplistically

mechanistic that makes sense to me I I

uh frankly never bought the idea that

just smiling would make me feel happy um

especially if my internal state was not

one of Happiness like fighting the

internal state also um in the early

2000s I think it was there was a lot of

discussion about how positioning the

body in certain ways you know taking up

more space would allow people to feel

more powerful and they some of these

studies um and uh argued that there were

even hormonal shifts associated with um

taking up more space that were

associated with feelings of empowerment

and then when shrinking of oneself was

in associated with elevated cortisol

States and as I say all this I'm I I

want to be clear that um do not take a

simplistic view of the nervous system or

endocrine system and I I didn't um I

don't think that you were implying that

either so want to make sure that anyone

listening or watching isn't thinking

that uh for instance that cortisol is

bad cortisol is wonderful and essential

you just need it regulate properly or

that um the idea that the body and

emotional states are are inextricably

linked makes a ton of sense to me but

the idea that you could just you know

grab onto one of the nodes in the EM now

I have to be careful not say emotion

system um like position of the body like

being hunched over makes you depressed

no that never made sense to me taking up

more space makes you feel more uh

powerful that doesn't it it can't be

that way and yet we were told for about

a decade through especially through

popular press that this stuff was true

um and so what I love about your work is

that it includes a neuroanatomical a

psychological a Network perspective that

that there isn't one seat of emotions

and and so on um so if we could go a

little bit further into the facial

expression piece for a moment

sure I was taught in my Psychology and

Neuroscience textbooks because it was

right there in front of me that there

were some core categories of facial

expression that were Universal cross

cultures that conveyed something about

the internal state of the person that

the downward you know lips in the corner

and and some and maybe even a furrowing

of the brow was associated with negative

veent States like sadness perhaps even

depression that the opposite of upward

turn corners of the mouth and widening

of the eyes was delight and excitement

some of that feels pretty true to my

experience but how do you and other

serious scientists of emotions view that

somewhat classic literature now yeah so

I'll just say that my um

my journey here my scientific Journey

was not one of um attempting to

overturn um a Century's worth

of are we alled to swear

basically I mean it's just it's like

it's it's stereotyp it's basically

Western stereotypes enshrined as

scientific uh fact and that sounds like

a pretty harsh thing to say but I think

I pretty much stand by that at this

point

um but for me when I was a graduate

student When I Was An undergraduate in

uh in Psychology and in physiology and

in anthropology you know I also had read

that Darwin said that there were these

distinctive facial expressions that um

were coordinated with specific emotional

states specific states of the nervous

system this was Darwin's View and I

assumed it was correct

um until I started to try to use that

information um in the lab and everything

fell apart you know so when you show

someone in uh a laboratory like a

student or um somebody from the

community a face a disembodied face

where their the person's eyes are

widened in the face and they're gasping

like a stereotypic fear

expression most of the time they don't

know what it

is and so I would try to use these faces

and um as stimuli and experiments and

they W they weren't working the way that

they were supposed to work and there

were really going all the way back to

the beginning of psychology there were

always debates about whether or not this

was actually accurate and there's a

really interesting story about how

Darwin came to this idea um which I can

tell you about but it it's not because

he cared about emotion and he was

basically taking his own very Western

views about emotion to make some claims

about Evolution actually so um I have

more to say about that and

about why it's a problem to take

anything that anybody said even Darwin

from you know 150 or so years ago or

whatever it is and treat it like it's a

modern text you know he was writing at a

particular time for a particular purpose

um and that doesn't necessarily mean

that whatever he wrote is

true um but I'll just tell you what the

evidence

says um that there has been in

Psychology a debate really vicious

debate actually for probably 50 years

about the nature of facial expressions

and whether they are Universal and

whether there's this onetoone

correspondence between a particular face

and like a facial configuration in a

particular emotional state smiling in

happiness scowling in Anger wrinkling

your nose and disgust and so in

2016 I think the association for

psychological

science um tasked me and some other

senior

scientists uh with attempting to write a

white paper a consensus paper on what

the literature actually show so what

does the research actually show if you

read all the research you know can you

find a pattern there does it actually

reveal anything about whether or not

facial expressions are Universal

particularly for emotion um and the way

they do this they have a journal for

this purpose for taking a widely held

belief that is highly debated and

bringing together a panel of experts who

disagree with each other at the outset

and they have to work together to see if

they can come to consensus over

the

data and this is something that you know

people have tried in the past and I mean

they're really vicious people have been

vicious with each other over this

question so when we brought together a a

group of people so me several people

refused to serve senior scientists

refused to serve on this panel but out

of fear of losing their funding or

something um you know that's a whole

other conversation about

why SC certain scientists would not want

to engage W uh with um people who

disagree with them um that's an

interesting conversation to have but um

I don't think it's as simple actually as

just they their careerist or they they

care about you know their money or or

funding or whatever that would be an

easy answer but I don't actually think

that's what's going on but that's

another sort of but anyway so uh there

were five of us who got together um all

senior scientists all from different

fields some of us hadn't met each other

before we all knew of each other of

course and we met over Zoom for two and

a half years this is preco because

people were all over the world right and

we we read over a thousand papers so so

I was the only one in this group of the

five of us who my starting hypothesis

was that facial movements are meaningful

but they're not there's no one-o-one

correspondence between a particular

facial configuration like a

scowl and anger not not just that it

would vary across cultures but that it

varies AC for you across situations I

mean do you scowl every time you're

angry I don't scowl every time I'm angry

in fact and I also scowl at times when

I'm not angry

so and there are scientific reasons to

think that that the that a the

collection of facial expressions that

people make when they're angry or when

they're sad or whatever would be highly

variable so that was my starting

position and then the there were varying

four guys so there was I just refer to

them as the guys because it was me and

four guys and the guys they all to some

extent thought that facial expressions

were Universal but they had differing

reasons and all for for for

hypothesizing that and they

also had different commitments degrees

of commitment to

that position but we right off the bat

sort of agreed that we it didn't matter

who was right that was just not relevant

the only thing that mattered was that we

could come to the consensus over the

data and if we couldn't we had to really

pinpoint why like so what would be the

critical experiments that would have to

be done in order for us to come to

consensus over the data and we also

agreed that um we had all kinds of

contingency set up so you know you've

got five senior people who are all

running big labs and they're investing

you know upwards of three years working

on a paper so if we can't come to

consensus what are we going to do are we

going to write one paper and sort of

write about the process or are we going

to write separate papers or you know but

we we had all these contingencies laid

out but the key here I think is that we

agreed that we were not going to be

adversarial about it because it didn't

matter who was right and in fact if

somebody had to admit they were wrong

and someone was going to have to admit

they were wrong I mean it turns out all

of us were wrong about something but it

we were going to be like supportive of

each other and and really encourage each

other um because you know being wrong is

no one likes to be wrong but for

scientists to admit they're wrong is

hard and it's something that we should

encourage each other to do I think more

and and more

publicly and I think the people who do

that are really Brave and so that was my

position and they all agreed and the

long story short here is

that two and a half years a thousand

papers later we all very reasonably came

to consensus that there was no evidence

for facial expressions of emotion being

Universal and that instead what is what

there's clear evidence of is um that

facial expressions the way that people

move their faces in in in moments of

expression is highly variable

meaning sometimes in Anger you scowl

meta analyses so statistical summaries

of many many many studies even in the

west show that people

scowl about 35% of the time when they're

angry which is more than chance so it

get you a good publication in you know

the proceedings of the National

Academy but that means 65 % of the

time people are moving their faces in

other meaningful ways that's not

scowling so if you actually used a

scowl um or even you know a scowl in

blood pressure or you know just maybe

not one signal but like a couple signals

but you would be wrong more than half

the time you would miss more than half

the cases and even more

importantly I think that that's the

reliability question so there's low

reliability for um the the

correspondence between a scowl and anger

it's above chance so scowling is one

expression of anger but it's certainly

not the dominant one and there is no

dominant one it's just highly variable

depending on the situation that you're

in so sometimes when I'm angry I sit

quietly and plot the demise of my enemy

you know sometimes I smile in Anger

Sometimes I Cry in Anger it really

depends on the

situation um but more importantly half

of the scowls that people make are not

related to

anger that means that the

specificity is

again higher than

chance but not that much higher than

chance so if you see someone

scowling the chances are that they might

not be angry they might be concentrating

really hard or they might have gas I

mean there are a lot of reasons why

people make a SC owl um and we found

this for every emotion category that had

ever been studied and I want you to

notice what I just did there I'm not I'm

no longer referring to an emotion as if

it's an entity or a thing so anger isn't

one thing it's a category of things a

grouping of things and if I'm not

mistaken it includes verbs right that

like anger as a set of verb actions in

the in the brain and body yes it's a

process it's not an event process

exactly it's not a noun it's a verb and

it's a and it's a process but the point

is that um it's it's a highly variable

grouping of

instances if you're if you are talking

about all instances of anger all

instances of anger that you have ever

experienced or witnessed um is a highly

variable grouping of instances That Vary

that they that doesn't mean they're

random but what the body does in Anger

depends on what the physical movements

will be in anger and that depends on the

situation that you're in and what your

goal is and um and there are ways to

talk about that in Neuroscience terms

which are a little more precise but the

important thing to understand here I

think is that we're only talking about

Western cultures now the minute that you

go outside of the West to or even to the

east I mean so you know there are other

cultures you know that have been studied

um like uh China and cultures in China

in Japan in Korea they they all have

access to knowledge about Western

cultural practices a norm so what

happens when you go to you know to

remote cultures which um have much less

access so they it's not like they have

no access because we live in a

globalized world so even hunter

gatherers in Tanzania the hza have

access to Western practices and Norms

but much less much less and we did do

that and and um and all bets are off

there I mean most of the time they don't

even they don't even understand or

experience facial movements as having

anything to do with emotion so if they

saw an emoji of a smiley face would they

just assume it was a couple they might

think it's a face there because as we

both know there's some fairly hardwired

brain circuitry for the the two eyes and

a and a line beneath it and something in

the middle that's pseudo nose that

organization of just spatial features

cues up face for both for most prates

it's really interesting that you say

that because yes of course that's true

but it's not there at Birth what's there

at Birth is a preference for that

configuration right so it's it's like

there's some and we could talk about why

that's there it's actually very

controversial but um but what babies

what newborns Orient to they Orient to

that or they Orient to that

configuration but it doesn't have to be

a face and then very quickly they start

learning faces because they're exposed

to fa I mean really the first three

months of life is almost like a massive

continuous tutorial on what faces are

because they're you know being fed and

and everyone's in your face saw a baby

last night and you see the baby friends

of have a unbelievably cute baby with

the big cheeks and you want and there's

this desire to see the baby smile right

so you do the things that and if that

the baby shows some sort of facial

expression that makes it seem like it's

a little bit um like resist in what

you're doing you you stop doing it you

change up your strategy and then when

baby cracks a smile like now I'm going

to assume that the baby may or may not

have been happy inside um that little

baby head um but when they do there's a

reciprocity then we smile there's a

template that that's very robust right

but I want you to notice though that so

first of all I'm not saying that um that

recognizing faces a face as a face is

not hardwired it is but it's hardwired

by not by genes alone right and in fact

there's a really wonderful book called

not by genes alone basically there's

cultural inheritance we have the kind of

nature that requires nurture we have the

kind of genes that require Early

Learning we have we need wiring

instructions from the world to get the

rest of the information that we need to

be competent culturally competent in our

in our in our lives and that starts at

Birth it probably starts before birth

even um but um in the third trimester

there's some evidence of learning fetal

learning even in the third trimester so

um the point is not that people aren't

hardwired for viewing faces or

recognizing faces it's just where does

that hard wirring come from it's not by

genes alone genes aren't the blueprint

the brain is expecting certain inputs

from the world and it needs that because

infant brains are wiring themselves to

their world and part of that world is

people making faces at them and smiling

and those people happen to also be the

ones who are maintaining who are

maintaining that baby's nervous system I

mean there is reward learning right or

reinforcement learning right off the bat

because these are the people who keep

you comfortable they are the ones who

feed you they're the ones who help you

get to sleep and so on and so forth and

so you're going to be very very

sensitive to changes in the

contingencies of their behavior your

brain as a pattern learner is just going

to learn those patterns if we know that

smiling is more you know smiling is a

cue for happiness it's because we've

learned it and that doesn't mean that

that learning isn't hardwired it just

means that it that information got into

your brain by cultural inheritance which

is a part of evolutionary

theory in the extended evolutionary

synthesis not in the original you know

not in the original uh formulation that

some people still kind of stick

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huberman so it's far more nuanced uh

than it was presented to me in those

textbooks and and it sounds like it was

outright wrong on many dimensions well

can I just mention one thing though

please this is really serious stuff like

sometimes people think well you know

what's the big deal this is such a big

deal I'll tell you why it's a big deal

because in our culture people believe

that they can

read mental states of other people by

their

face and they believe it so much that

it's enshrined in the legal

system and there are people who lose

their lives because juries

believe that they can read remorse or or

the lack of it and in fact there was

just a case um you know last year I

believe where um you know the Innocence

Project uh got involved because there

was a woman who was on death row and

what put her on death row was um a

police officer's claim that he could

read her emotions by her the comportment

of her face and her

body and um and you know uh it was

possible to get a stay of execution so

that she could be retried and you know

um so I'm not saying she was guilty or

not guilty I'm just

saying what put her on death row was

evidence that would not be admissible in

a

scientific um way now um and there are

there are lots of cases where judgments

are made that end up impacting people's

lives in pretty serious ways so this is

a really serious thing and it's um it's

puzzling to

me why it's so it's got such traction

this idea that there are these

Universal um Expressions that we can use

to read each other you know um it's it's

just not true I mean the science just

it's so overwhelmingly I feel like you

know scientists I don't like to use the

t word you know the FW fact you know

it's a scary word t word truth but I

think in this case I feel like I can I

can really at least with a little te I

can I can use it you probably have

particular facial movements that you

make on a regular basis that are tells

for you I know I do you know my husband

can look at my actions and he can make

really decent guesses about what's going

on for me upstairs right but that's

because he's known me for 30 years

actually 30 years today I should just

met each other 30 years ago today but

he's you know brains are pattern

Learners so I'm not saying that

everything is random and like there's no

it's all noise I'm saying that there

just aren't

these you know Universal templates they

just it's not like that and we really

have to stop assuming that that that

there are well I'm so glad that you're

getting that message out there and I'm

very thankful that you highlighted the

seriousness of this um these myths that

have propagated and that's a perfect

segue into what I was already going to

ask which is um it's based on something

that I think is in very much agreement

with what you're saying a previous guest

on this podcast I think it was our first

guest episode Dr Carl di Roth colleague

of mine at Stanford incredible

bioengineer um really you know

0.01% in his you know category of

science as well as a practicing uh

psychiatrist said something which really

stuck with me over the years which I

once heard him say you know we don't

really know how other people feel at all

in fact most of the time we don't even

know how we feel and that prompted the

question for me about how good or poor

are we at gauging our own emotional

states and in particular at labeling

them both to others and for ourselves

and and so here's the the direct

question is language sufficient to

capture this incredibly complex thing

that we're calling emotions so for

instance the other day I was in New York

with my sister then she left I went out

for a bit I was having a pretty good day

and then I returned to the place where I

was staying and I was hit with this

feeling of intense loneliness and I

don't know why and then I had a bunch of

ideas about how that related to growing

up and but I was going to see friends

the next day and I'm an adult and so I

could use some top down regulation and

say oh you know maybe I'm a little tired

or I didn't because I hadn't slept as

well the night before I've been pretty

rested recently and then I actually

wrote in my journal I I said you know

maybe most of feeling good is being

pretty well rested and not in any

physical pain that's a big part of

feeling good is the absence of fatigue

and the absence of physical

pain and and then I thought wow that's

just so basic that's like two bill buing

blocks is clearly insufficient but then

I couldn't think of a word to adequately

describe the emotion that came about an

hour later when I was feeling a little

bit better but not completely better so

was I lonely not really not anymore was

I sad not really but you know as I had

headed out into the city I was thinking

I don't really have a word for how I

feel I'm sort of okay not great not low

you know and so I think that we have

emotional labels I certainly do for Peak

you know these Peak emotional states

super happy I loved the time with my

sister we do this every year this was a

particularly good year for us um to do

this and and it went really well we were

texting back and forth how great it was

I certainly know what it feels like to

be really down in the in the pits I've

got language for that but then there's

this huge range in between and so I

guess the simple question is should we

even trust language as a way

to understand how we're feeling or are

there additional if not better signals

that we should perhaps learn to

elaborate um our understanding of

emotions

with so I'm going to give you a a simple

answer and then I'm going to give you a

more complicated answer right so the

simple answer is no language is not

sufficient period I think the way that

you have well I should say one language

is not sufficient so English is not

sufficient and probably French on its

own is not sufficient and probably

Swahili on its own is not sufficient

although it's very interesting that the

the states that we Mark with words in

each culture some of them overlap but a

lot of them don't and it's very very

useful to have labels of emotion

Concepts from other cultures that that

capture configurations or a state that

we we don't really Mark we don't Mark

those and and sort of distinctively pull

them out as as different from other

states I'd love to know what some of

those are oh there there um I should

have brought them with me I mean there

there are some like there's one there's

a German word which I can't remember the

name of the word but it's like um the

experience of someone having a face that

deserves a punch I'm sure someone will

tell us in the comments someone someone

who knows German or spend time there

please put that word in in the comments

but don't don't punch any another one

that's my favorite is um um liot which

is is um it's a Polynesian um head

hunting um uh emotion word and it

means um exuberant aggression in a

group like soccer or or head

hunting right where you're basically um

or I should say also um in the military

so when I was listening to m one day A

couple of years ago must have been more

than that because it's in my book so it

was probably more than seven years ago

I was listening to these guys talk these

former um um military uh Personnel talk

about being um deployed in a war where

they're with their buddies and

they're they're basically hunting the

enemy and they

feel exuberant like they're you know and

and they're it's not that they're happy

but they're it's Pleasant and it's very

intense very high arousal you know and

in the moment it it seemed right and

then they come back um you know and they

ask themselves like they come back and

so they're now you know their

deployments ended now they're back home

and they're like am I a psychopath like

I enjoy killing people what is this

about and I was thinking no no you just

experienced liot and if you had a word

for it you would understand that it's a

groupy feeling where you're all in it

together and it's really intense and you

know they were experiencing the um the

intensity of of um having their life on

the line and and being responsible for

their for their brothers you know and

sisters in in in their troop you know so

um the the what they would realize is

it's a perfectly it's perfectly within

the range of normal human variation it's

just that in English we don't have a

word for it really but there are words

there are Concepts in other languages

right or the other one that I like is

called gigle which is where when you see

a baby who's really cute and you just

want to like oh you yesterday evening

squee oh my God that kid was so cute

those little cheeks are just like

jumping at you and and the parents are

delightful people too and they was just

facing out cuz they had one of those

outward facing baby things and it's just

sort of like yeah it's and I thinkle

it's called it's gigle gigle oh keigle

is from the other episode that we did on

well it also has to do with babies but

yeah in a different way um or there's

one in I think there's a Japanese

word for the despair that you feel when

you got a bad

haircut really yeah cuz it's I mean it's

really is a different kind of feeling

than you know because you got to like

wait for it to grow up you know whatever

anyways the point being that amazing

words for us Mark particular States and

they're not all the they're not always

the states that other people in other

cultures care about but I there's a but

the even again the phrasing of your

question I just want to come back to and

I'm not trying to pick at you but feel

free what I love is that what what you

said before when you said my question

was illposed in your in the answer that

followed it made it very clear why and I

learned something about how the the the

the not emotion system but the things

plural that that create emotions work so

uh feel free I I I grew up in the same

culture that you did I'm not Canadian by

birth but but in the academic culture

yeah you know I mean the the stuff that

we take online by the way folks is

nothing compared to the kind of hazing

that I experienced growing up in uh in

academic culture as it was done then I

don't know if it's still that way now so

uh feel free yeah I'm tougher than I

look well no I think my point is that

I'm trying to get at here is that when

we ask questions any of us me too

anybody ask a question there are certain

assumptions that we're making in order

to allow us to pose the question and

sometimes what I'm taking issue with is

not the question itself but it's the

assumptions behind the question right

and this is a very classic thing in

philosophy of science which I know I

just said the p word philosophy which

scientists you know usually they roll

their eyes back in their head and fall

over when you talk about that but I

think it's really important so you know

can language is language sufficient to

label or to to to gauge emotional states

kind of sounds like and this is the

assumption that people make that there's

a state in here called an emotion and

now I have to label it I have to

identify it

that is not how it works like that is

not what your brain is doing at all and

in order to explain what I think is

happening and what I my best available

guess you know like based on what I

understand it's like not even remotely

that that is just not a meaningful

question at all um I do think words are

important I just don't think that they

have to be insufficient by virtue of

what the brain is actually doing and the

way that I come at this is just really

different from a lot of my colleagues so

really for a hundred years at least I

hate when people say things like that

like for a hundred years but it really

is like for for a hundred years at least

what psychologists and neuroscientists

do have did and are still doing is they

start with a folk experience a folk

category a common sense experience I

feel angry uh I'm making a decision um

having a memory I'm remembering

something they start with their

experience and then they go looking for

the physical basis of that experience in

the brain or in you know in the

body I think that's really problematic

because not everybody in the world

actually uses those categories or has

those experiences a lot of that has to

do with the scientific publication

process one of the most important

statements I ever heard is from the late

Ted Jones one of the greatest neur

anatomists of probably the last 500

years

um which was the following he said a

drug is a substance that when injected

into an animal or a person produces a

scientific

paper and in many way foot yeah yeah you

kind of catch catch you square in the

face can you go oh right yeah I mean

basically every drug disrupts if taken

an hour or two before sleep changes the

amount of REM sleep that you get so so I

could imagine that almost any

perturbation of the language system the

body the facial movements system could

give you a quote unquote effect that you

could write a paper about yeah but that

doesn't mean it has any semblance

whatsoever to what's happening in the

world when we or other people experience

emotions and here's the here you know

there's so much in what you said that I

I just want to it's very it's very

exciting to talk to you so the first

thing I'll say is that

um you know we often will identify we we

as in the you know people but also

scientists

identify biological

um signals um by what we believe them to

mean psychologically so serotonin is is

a happiness chemical no serotonin

evolved as a metabolic

regulator it is a metabolic regulator

and whatever it's doing it's allowing an

animal to

spend

resources when the animal the animal's

brain isn't sure there's a a reward at

the end of that right so you were saying

before you know the absence of fatigue

the absence of discomfort that's a

that's a pleasant feeling right well

yeah so maybe serotonin has something to

do with pleasantness because it has

something to do with energetics right

cortisol cortisol is not a stress

hormone it's not a stress hormone I mean

it's a hormone that is secreted more

when the brain believes that there is a

big metabolic outlay that's

required that's what stress is basically

it's the brain believes there's a big

metabolic outl that's about to be

required and it matters these kind of

like little semantic tweaks like they

matter a lot because of how we do

because of how we do research so I would

say I don't start with the categories

that derive from English and my own

experience um I start with the nervous

system I try to learn what is the best

available evidence for for how that

nervous system evolved how it developed

how it structured right Anatomy to me is

very important some of my best

hypotheses come from just learning the

anatomy and realizing oh well there's a

connection there that's direct that mean

that should mean something you know I

mean um I could give you lots of

examples of um uh where we've had we've

made discoveries solely because we

noticed an an a set of anatomical

connections and were're really curious

about what they might be involved with

but if you start with that premise then

you think about the brain in I think

about the brain a really different way

right so I don't think about the brain

as a stimulus driven

organ um I think about it more like this

that the the brain is

um first of all the brain is not running

a model or or making inferences about

the world

all the brain knows is are signals from

the sensory surfaces of its body so your

brain is modeling your retina and it's

modeling your ca and it's modeling the

sensory surfaces of the

skin and sure signals you know are you

know hit those surfaces and those

surfaces transduce those signals and

send them up to the

brain but the brain only knows the body

and anything it knows about the world it

knows about the world through the body

through the sensory surfaces of the body

so that's the first for me really big

important point the second important

point is that I think about the brain as

being trapped in a dark silent

box called your skull you know and it's

so weird saying these things to you

you're so much you know you're like

you're this really esteemed like

neuroscientist in here I am explaining

to you how I think the brain works it's

just very you know what's important for

our audience but it's also important for

me even though yes I know I know these

facts but it's I believe it's always uh

informative to go back to the

fundamentals because we forget you know

actually I would say that the uh someone

once described um the I'll call him the

great because he's a great visual

neuroscientist uh visual neuroscientist

Tony maavin who founded the department

of of neuroscience at NYU once said you

know a real intellectual is somebody

that can appreciate and work with a

topic at multiple levels

it's not and oftentimes the more experti

is associated with more focus on detail

so I love returning to the core Basics

so I I think it's wonderful please

please continue so I think about the

brains being trapped in this box and um

it's receiving signals continuously from

the sensory surfaces of the body but

those signals are the outcomes of some

set of changes and the brain doesn't

know what the changes are it doesn't

know the causes of those signals it just

knows the outcomes it knows the signals

that's what it's receiving

and so it has to guess at what the

causes of those signals are in order to

stay

alive

um and so that's in philosophy called an

inverse problem so the brain just has a

massive continuous inverse problem that

it has to deal with all the time like it

can't have it doesn't have access to all

the information no it's just a guessing

machine it's a guessing machine so for

example um you know if you hear a loud

bang what is that loud bang could be a

car door slamming it could be thunder it

could be a car backfiring it could be a

gunshot the brain doesn't know it has to

guess and it's not making a guess like

uh intellectual guess the Guess is a

motor plan it's a plan for changing the

internal state of the body in order to

support motor skeletal motor movements

do I do I need to run do I need to shut

the window do I need to get an umbrella

do I you know do I need to hold my

breath because the car is backfired you

know what do I need to do so where does

that plan come

from well it comes from past experience

the experience that's been wired into

the

brain um what the I think that the

evidence suggests that what the brain is

doing is

basically reinstating

bits and pieces of past experience so

remembering although we don't experience

ourselves as remembering but basically

it's reimplementing ensembles of

signals from the past that are similar

to the present in some

way now a bunch of things which are

similar to each

other in Psychology is a

category so what the brain is doing is

it's creating a it's constructing a

category and in fact we think about the

brain as a continuous category

Constructor it's constructing a category

of possible Futures possible outcomes

possible motor

plans

and how does it know which is the right

one because it's not just picking one

there's going to be some sample that

it's re it's re-implementing but how

does it know which one which is the

right one because there can only be one

well I feel like in the example of a

loud noise

what I immediately thought of as you

were describing that is that my system

would become aware of it I would become

aware of it but then it's a question of

is there another loud noise how closely

are those loud noises spaced is it

getting louder or less loud and then and

so a bunch of categories it it's like a

bookshelf with an infinite number of

books but then with the second loud

noise now it's just you know one uh wing

of the library and then with the the

next thing that happens and the context

it starts narrowing and then pretty soon

you get presented with the book that

says you know the roof is about to cave

in sure and and I think your your PO

your your analogy there is pointing out

two things one is that um really why why

the what the brain is attempting to do

is to reduce

uncertainty because uncertainty is super

expensive now sometimes we like

deliberately you know cultivate

uncertainty right like we do not you

know we deliberately try to learn things

we don't you know that we don't know we

we you know put ourselves novel

situations you know we seek novelty and

because it's fun and interesting and

whatever sure but imagine every single

waking moment of your life was like that

where you didn't know you couldn't

narrow things down from the library to

the wing to the Bookshelf to the you

know the to the the particular shelf on

that bookshelf to yeah you terrifying

yeah it would be that's the label I

would give it it would be terrifying cuz

I couldn't plan anything or do anything

because all possibility are open right

it's and it's just actually

metabolically

unsustainable and you know there are

some there are some brains that are

wired in a way that they don't predict

very well they don't create these

categories very well and so they're

they're dealing

with in really unbelievable amounts of

uncertainty so that's one thing I is but

that part of what's the goal here if you

could say there's a goal is to reduce

uncertainty and I'm going to get why

this has anything to do with emotion in

a minute but I I just need to set up the

ground rules or the assumptions uh you

know of what I'm what I'm working with

here so the other thing though that you

pointed out which I think is really

important is that the um none of this is

static it's all evolving over time right

the signals are evolving over time so

both the signals that are constantly

hitting the sensory surfaces of the body

and making their way to the brain but

also the intrinsic signals in the brain

it's all changing over time so when we

talk about context that's important how

is the brain making a decision about

similarity like what are the features

that are similar it's it's not just at a

single snapshot in time it's always

happening dynamically over time right

and most of the time

though you don't ask your you don't wait

to hear a second sound you don't you're

not deliberately attempting to figure

out what the sound is your brain is just

sorting it out right and it's sorting It

Out by narrowing down the possibilities

and there are some selection mechanisms

in the brain that help it guess better

but also the signals coming from the

world um are are also helping to select

which

possibility um is the right one I'd like

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there's this scene that comes to mind

from that movie I think it was Saving

Private Ryan where like the the um the

guys that are about to hit the ground on

D-Day are flinching with every crack of

gunfire like they're just everything's a

stimulus to move and to end and then

some of the more

seasoned soldiers are literally having

bullets whizzing by their head and

people are dropping Dead all around them

and they're moving forward steeli and

stable and upright and in part we look

at that and and say okay they're

courageous they're seasoned maybe

they're desensitized in certain ways but

actually it fits much better with the

idea based on what you're saying it fits

much better with the idea that um they

have intimate knowledge both conscious

and unconscious knowledge that something

right next to them is a threat but not a

threat worth responding to right exactly

but if it were headed straight for them

they would quite quite understand what I

would say it's is that it's um it's not

uh you know I keep referring to things

as signals and really I'm just I'm

that's like my generic word for a

quantity of energy of some sort you know

but your brain my brain every brain is

constantly making signal noise distinct

you know like distinctions do I need to

care about this do I do I not need to

care about this right and we have ways

of learning and we also have ways of

queuing each other so um you know humans

use eye gaze to cue each other about

what is signal and what is noise right

so if you and I were sitting or let's

say we were at a coffee shop and we were

in a part of town that i' had never been

to before and we were sitting having

coffee and you know a loud siren went by

if you turned and looked i' would

probably turn and look because you just

cued me that that was something I need

to care about if you ignored it I'd

probably ignore it because you just cued

me that I I didn't need to worry about

it I didn't need to care and we're

constantly doing that with each other

and we also do it with little babies and

with kids and that's how we teach

children this is signal this is noise

this you need to worry about this you

can ignore and so yeah your your

description is perfect so what does this

have to do any of this have to do with

emotion in order to answer that part of

the question I I I want to

say so okay you've got these signals the

brain is like has these electrical

signals going on we'll just ignore the

hormonal signals for the moment because

that's complic you know one is

complicated so it's got all these

electrical signals going on it's when

it's remembering something it's just

basically reinstating a pattern of

signals and it's got these signals

coming in um from the sensory servfaces

okay so what's so what is the brain

doing it's a signal processor so what is

it I don't mean a computer I mean a

signal processor in the engineering

sense so what's it what is it doing

without getting into all the Dynamics

of prediction and you know whatever what

the brain is doing is it's um it's

assembling a set of

features it's some of the features that

it's assembling are very close in detail

to the sensory surfaces of the body so

in primary visual cortex there's a

retinotopic map the details there are

very very low level like a line an edge

you know same thing in primary auditory

cortex right it's tonotopic so there are

tones

but it's very very very lowlevel details

and we might there are many many many

many of these little features so we

would say there there's a it's a high

dimensional array lots and lots and lots

and lots of features and then and let's

just talk about one structure just the

cerebral cortex let's not worry about

just but what I'm about to say is

basically true of really the rest of the

brain as well if you take the cortex off

the surface uh the cortical sheet off

the that wavy you know cortical sheet

you take it off the rest of the brain

the subcortical parts and you stretch it

out like a napkin you can see there's a

compression gradient there in the

architecture of the neurons so at the

primary sensory areas there are these

tiny little paramal neurons that are

representing these little these very

low-level features and they feed into

bigger neurons which feed into bigger

neurons which feed into more bigger

neurons so what's happening is you've

got this very detailed array

being compressed in its dimensionality

until you get to the middle of the brain

at the front where there are many fewer

neurons but they're bigger and they have

many more connections so it's a

dimensionality reduction that's

happening so just to make sure I

understand um correctly and that the

audience understands the physical world

obviously is um transformed by our

sensory apparati the retina the ca the

the sensing neurons in our skin

umal things mechan pressure phon sound

waves okay that's translated into neural

code which is chemical and electrical

yeah and and those sensory inputs are

are fairly vast and you call high

dimension high dimensionality so lots of

different orientations of lines lot even

you know even though it originates with

just three uh cone photop pigments lots

of opportunity for encoding different

shades of color contrast okay and all of

that so you have lots of little neurons

to represent all the possibilities of

the physical world that are occurring MH

but as that information is passed

further up along EXC I have to be

careful with the use of hierarchies

because that's controversial nowadays

not for political reasons but for

accuracy reasons um as that information

is passed along there's more um

convergence onto a smaller number of

larger neurons so these are neurons that

have access to a lot of information but

in coarser form right so there are low

you know it's like like compressing an

MP3 like how an MP3 compresses

information for example so the cortex is

representing

features so and I represent I'm just

using that in a generic way because

that's also controversial about exactly

how is the okay but yeah but it works

but for now I'm using it just in a

generic way so you go from lines and

edges to a shape like a round shape to a

face to a right so you're you're

basically you're you're um you're going

what's happening is there are

summaries of summaries of summaries of

summies I love that I hope everyone

hears that because I've been in this

field of Neuroscience a long time as you

move along the neur axis from the

sensory epithelium now it sounds very

very Gomen clish but from the surface of

the skin inward you're getting summaries

yeah they send more and more summaries I

think that's so important I that's a

that's a like a gazillion dollar

statement for understanding of the

nervous system so but each of those

points correspond to some mental feature

like a line or an edge or a circle or a

square or a face or right but but now

then you when you when you're in the

midline at the front what are those

features well those features are things

like they are they are multimodal

summaries meaning they are summaries of

the sights and sounds and smells and

right but they and they are lower

dimensional meaning they are they're

coarser so there are things like threat

reward

pleasure I mean really abstract that's

what abstract means it doesn't mean that

those representations have no sensory or

motor meaning it means that threat for

example a

summary can have many different patterns

associated with it and the brain is

treating them all as equivalent this

this to me again feels so so important

for people to understand because um as

I'm hearing this and this word summaries

is just ringing in my mind it's so

important because one of the core

components of my experience of my

emotions because that's all I can really

say for sure my

subjective interpretation and labeling

of my own emotions is that they are

pretty broad bins like I described ear

pretty broad bins and so that that's

where I was exactly where I was going

so what about the word anger where is

that represented like well that's a

that's a one of these multimodal

abstractions in fact anger is just a

couple of phones it's a couple of sounds

but those sounds the sound of anger

corresponds over thousands of instances

that you've learned in your life to very

different patterns of sensory motor

features that's right because what's

going on in your

body during anger can vary what the way

you move your face in Anger can vary

depending on the situation what you see

someone else doing in Anger can vary and

so the word anger or any word is

actually just a multi Al summary of many

many many many instances which are in

their sensory and motor features the

sensory and motor meaning very different

and and it seems to me are highly

constrained by Developmental and

cultural experience absolutely because

just today I learned that there's a word

in Japan for the feeling that one has of

having gotten a haircut they don't like

there's a word in Germany

that pertains to the feeling of wanting

to punch someone specifically because of

the look on their face well really it's

more like you like you they to you it

feels like they're asking to be punched

in the face even so you added yet more

dimensionality to it so upon learning

just those things just today there is

additional dimensionality brought in

such that if I were to ever um want to

punch somebody in the face simply

because of the look on their

face that I wouldn't NE necessarily

label that as anger alone it now has

another dimension to it and so I I think

I'm finally I think I'm finally starting

to understand how the Developmental and

the cultural influences plus the fact

that language is a pretty crude

descriptor for this neural process that

you're describing oh absolutely

absolutely but okay so but but before

you use the word granularity and so I'm

going to use that word too in fact I've

you I've coined that phrase emotional

granularity

um just as an aside you know I coined

that phrase almost 30 years ago and now

people study it like it's a phenomenon

which is cool in a sense but also I kind

of want to keep reminding them like

that's a word that refers to a process

it's not a thing it's a process and the

but the process

is so when the brain is a category

Constructor

how fine grained are the categories how

size of the categories right like if

you're using if your feature of

equivalence that your brain is using is

threat you're in really big trouble

because there are like a gazillion

different sensory motor patterns that

could go with threat so your category is

going to be massive so how does the

brain figure out which of those massive

number of options is the one to use in

this in in this instance if on the the

other hand you don't just want to use

sensory motor patterns as the features

of equivalence or the features that

you're using to say this instance right

now is similar to these past instances

if I had to search like right now what

is similar to right now it would be me

sitting across the table from somebody

who has a beard and is um dressed in

black and you know there there are a lot

of details there that probably don't

matter right so you you'd be searching

for a specific match from the past

that's not very efficient either so you

need something in the

middle and that that is to say you need

to have C your brain has to be able to

make categories that are more fine

grained but not super fine grained but

they have to be more fine grained than

just threat yeah you want to keep the in

the library analogy that I made earlier

you want to keep the rest of the library

accessible at some level yeah so you're

not just staring at that one book but if

you use the

category bad this feels bad

then your brain is

basically um going to

be partially constructing an entire Wing

full of books like a entire Wing full of

options if you use the word

angry um then maybe it's a bookcase it's

constructing a bookcase full of options

and a category that's the size of a

bookcase and if you were using the word

frustrated then maybe it's a shelf the

brain can learn to construct categories

at different scales of gen

generalizability so if I'm in an

instance and um my brain is making a

guess is it drawing from past instances

that were associated with the word

anger uh were associated with the word

fear maybe it's some combination it's

the words are just features they're just

sounds there are also all sorts of other

features like what was my heart doing

what what what kind of motor actions did

I make what did I see next so the point

being what I'm trying to bring here is

that it's not like your brain creates an

emotional state and then labels it what

your brain is doing is creating a

category of possible futures of what's

going to H what it's going to do next

and that state is largely determined by

the what the brain is remembering and

it's drawing from that huge population

that huge library of options which books

is it sampling I love this so much

because it explains so much that frankly

has been perplexing to me and also

somewhat troubling to me like for

instance I um we hear about emotional

intelligence you know and and sometimes

I wonder whether or not um true

emotional intelligence would be what you

just described the understanding of how

this process works so that you can work

with it and I definitely want to talk

about how one can work with this

knowledge because I think it's

incredibly powerful in its um

explanatory power but also um it's

actionable power um the other thing is

that it's clear to me just based on my

experience today of hearing these words

from other cultures that relate to

different emotional states that this

system unlike a lot of systems in the

brain I like to think is fairly plastic

yeah like the moment that you know that

there are additional Dimensions to

sadness Etc there's something comforting

about that what's really unsettling is

the idea that we have such broad bends

that we are we would Define you know a

near infinite number of situations as

just fear that would suck that's not a

good existence and yet I have to ask

whether or not you think that as a

species not as a culture but our entire

species whether or not we are taking the

exact opposite approach that we're sort

of moving into the Emoji

isation is that a word I'll make it a

word and people can assault me in the

comments um the

emojiz of this very rich and complex

system we're starting to get into this

mode of like I'm going to post an angry

face and therefore like this is a bad

I'm angry at you this is a bad

interaction we're going to it's it's um

combat potentially combative or and you

know maybe um Twitter X or Instagram or

other social media sites are kind of the

the epitome of this where you reduce

this High dimensional space in you you

keep the the sensory stimulation very

high it's movie after movie after movie

and color and sound and people doing

crazy parkour stuff and bears eating

giraffes or whatever it is probably not

bears eating giraffes but you know what

I mean and you can see stuff that's

sexual and violent and political and

emotional and sweet and then the cats

are kissing the monkey and you're like

or the monkey's kissing the cat and so

it's high dimensionality in terms of

sensory space but then what do we call

it we're like oh this is an emoji you

ass sign an emoji you're heting

something you're giving a thumbs up or a

thumbs down so I almost feel like we

we're trying to uh we we're regressing

to a state where we're kind of like an

infant trying to figure out like what

the hell is going on and we're saying

you know what you get like six

categories of response when in reality

um we should probably be expanding the

number of different responses that we

can have in order to accurately match

the way that our nervous system actually

works yes exactly there are many

different things we could talk about

with respect to the summary that you

just gave which I I think is completely

accurate so what I would say is that if

you look through even just the last I

don't know hundred or so years like the

19th you know 19th 20th centuries maybe

you can see that the complexity of the

of people's

responses expands and contracts right so

for example this is something that I've

written really speculatively about

um but one of the things that I found

really interesting um is that you know

authoritarianism authoritarian thinking

is the reduction of complexity to some

things that are really really simple

like you're getting rid of all the

complexity to you know basically these

very very coarse low dimensional

judgments and Things become black and

white um it's the avoid of

complexity um so that there can be

simple single answers to things and it

happens in human culture at times and

then then there's an expansion of

complexity at times too so what predicts

that like what is it in the human

nervous system or our Collective human

nervous you know like we're we're just a

bunch of brains attached to bodies

interacting with other brains and bodies

right so like what is it that causes

these um ripples of and and I have some

thoughts about that that are really

really really

speculative um but I think the other

thing that's that's really important is

that we've talked about we'll go back to

our our cortical sheet that we've and by

the way this is just one compression

gradient in the brain there are others

too right um there are at least four

others that I can think of um so this is

just one but all compression gradients

work the same way which is that now

we've talked about going from the

low-level details um compressing to

these multimodal summaries these really

like simple um features that are right

but that

compression is what Engineers would call

lossy meaning you lose the

information you lose the

information so when you go from lines

and edges to a face those neurons they

just know the face they don't have they

lose what they've thrown away the

details they've thrown away those

details are gone for those neurons that

are representing a face they don't have

access to that they don't have access to

it you know so we said well the brain is

making a guess it's making a guess about

what these what this big very very

high-dimensional you know soup of

signals in the world and in the body

like what do they mean

right when the brain makes a guess it

starts with the compressed low

dimensional sign it starts with the

features like anger or like threat or it

starts with these summaries and then it

has to infer or guess at every synapse

there's a guess that's being made about

what the details are at the next level

because what's happening is the guess is

basically the brain going from these

really General things to these very

specific sensory motor patterns it

happens along the cortical sheet it

happens also down the Nur axis down the

ner you know from the cortex to the

midbrain to the brain stem to the spinal

cord you have to go from a

representation of you know run to the

actual physical movements of muscles

spindles and you know angles of joints

and things like that so what you're

doing is you're going in the other

direction you're adding detail you're

particularizing and the brain is

guessing it's guessing well if it's

using anger as the general feature well

which which instance of anger is it and

what are the specifics that are going to

happen and and what are the WT and

forgive me but and what are the Adaptive

steps that I might take or not take

because um I'm quoting a lot today so

forgive me but in the words of the great

sharington Nobel prize winning

physiologist the final common pathway is

movement is movement and that's and and

movement is nuanced right humans I I

suppose have among the greatest variety

of different speeds and types of

movement I think about parkour or

gymnastics think about then what like a

a cheetah can do cheetah are impressive

a gymnist is truly impressive in terms

of the range of movements and speeds Etc

in any event the ultimate choice of the

nervous system has to make is whether or

not to

move which direction how fast or stay

still move move back and and I just I'll

just add because I'm I'm hoping that

you'll expand on this um it's been said

before that ultimately the nervous

system is trying to make decisions about

yum yuck or me like like am I going to

move towards something am I going to

move away from it or am I just going to

stay put well that's only that's only at

the that that's a very I would say that

those are very low dimensional features

those are those compressed features but

that's not the only thing the brain has

to decide that's just a misnomer well

good that I can get out of this little

pickle that I just put myself in by

saying that I didn't say that now I

won't quote who did because he's a very

famous neuroscientist but he tried to

reduce it all he's at Caltech it um he's

not somebody who studies emotion he

studies the visual system but he said

that you know that that there's a that

the the neural circuits maybe it's

because he studies mice are are

essentially bended into um yum yuck and

meh outputs and and i' I've always liked

it on the one hand cuz threes work and

it's simple but rarely is the way that

we describe things the way it actually

works so we would you know in in

studying humans we would say well that's

affect affect that's mood or you know

it's just like is it is it um should I

move towards it is it Pleasant should I

move away from it is it unpleasant or

you know is it irrelevant basically I

don't care okay think about when you're

feeling horrible you just feel you feel

you just feel you feel bad what do you

do you don't know what you don't know

because you don't have a plan of action

and that's ultimately that is what those

those compressed like summary features

those very low coarse features they have

to be decompressed into details

otherwise you don't know what to do so

ultimately what the brain is doing is

it's sampling from the

past based

on similarity to the present to plan an

action and when I say action I don't

just mean skeletal motor action like

moving a limb it you the first actions

that are planned are the actions of

coordinating the heart and the lungs and

you know all of the internal actions

that are required to support the motor

the skeletal motor movements so your

brain is making uh is categorizing and

it's making a it's it's creating a

category and it's there are options

there those options the motor plans

begin with should the heart beat faster

should it beat slower does blood

pressure need to go up should the you

know should the blood vessels constrict

or should they dilate um should the

breathing be deeper or more shallow I

mean those are the first plans that get

made and then milliseconds later there

are the skeletal motor plans and then

your experience of the world derives

from those motor plants those viscero

motor that is the plans for the viscera

for the internal organs and the skeletal

motor so I'm just going to refer to them

as motor those motor plans actually give

rise to your experience of the world

there's not some state that exists as an

emotional state which then you apply a

label to the

label is a just a set of

features that are useful for

generalizing from the past to the

present and the bin size or the the you

know of of what a word refers to can

change it can change it's different for

different people and it can change in

your lifetime and you can add new Bins

that is you can so for example there's a

there's a concept gusin look which I

probably just butchered so if you speak

Turkish I'm sorry but it's like um it

has features of it of like loss and um

like people blocking your goals so we

would say it's anger and sadness

together that's gusin look when you lose

something and you're pissed off about it

um that's a but that's a category on its

own right it's just a different way of

parsing that that that really detailed

soup and the more words you know the

more words are just useful

for pointing to a set of features that

are similar to each other so what I mean

by that is if I say to you Andrew I had

pizza last night for dinner pizza two

sounds two

syllables that those two syllables s

they stand in for like 50 different

sensory and motor

features because I don't have to say to

you I had a food I didn't have pizza L

thing but let's say I did I had a food

that was round and flat and had sauce

and also cheese and it it had mozzarella

cheese and also a little parmesan cheese

and it had mushrooms on it and a little

bit of uh Olive and you know um that's

like really really uh detailed and

complicated but instead I can just say I

had pizza two features two sounds two

syllables

phones and with those two

phones I have just communicated to you

in your brain my brain had 50 features

it was representing of details and now I

have just communicated those to you or

some number of them with two sounds very

efficient now of course you might think

that I was from Chicago and had deep

dish pizza and I'll just resist I don't

I don't want to like offend anybody from

Chicago it's not pizza that's not real

pizza that's not real Pizza um right so

you could then ask me uh was it but

you're from Chicago is that deep dish

pizza and then I would say no no I'm

actually from Toronto which is just like

New York and so no it was thin crust

pizza which is really the only kind of

pizza there is just saying but you know

but my point is that words are just

stand in for they're just low these low

dimensional features these these s of

gross features that stand in for many

many many many little detailed features

and that's how we communicate with each

other and and we are constrained by you

know what we know and our yes so and

what we can say and the extent of our

vocabulary and I'll just say that little

babies three months old they don't speak

yet and they don't understand language

but they can use words to learn abstract

categories so abstract just means that

the the word refers to many different

patterns of sensory motor features so

the word is um or the category the

things that make the instances similar

um are a function um or goal not like

the sensory motor features so you say to

a

baby very explicitly like because if

we're talking about three four-month-old

babies right babies can also do this

implicitly too um but in experim exp you

say to a baby look

sweetie this is a bling and you put the

bling down and it makes a beeping noise

and then you say now this looks

different feels different right smells

different look sweetie this is a

bling it

beeps now you take something

else which also is different and you say

look sweet this is a

bling now the baby expects this to beep

by the way folks just listening Lisa

just gave three examples first with a

pen then a coffee mug and then her very

own watch uh three very distinct objects

but all of which make uh that are told

uh the baby is told make uh a bling

sound and they will bend those three

yeah visual distinct objects

functionally distinct objects into one

single bin because they make a because

they are sharing a function which is to

beep I think this is so so important and

I um and if I may I I I want to ask

whether or not we can take this

incredible understanding of emotions

because that's really what we're talking

about well we're really talking about

how the brain my my version of how the

brain works and how emotions emerge out

of this system basically and and

absolutely um you described it far

better than I could and and and anchor

that to this concept of movement like

the movement is the final common path

with the understanding that the movement

system and forgive me but that we have

systems in the brain and body that allow

us to move that's for sure systems

plural that they run in both directions

in other words how we feel what we

feel our emotions has some bearing on

the movements that are more or less

likely for us in a given context and our

movements clearly can also influence the

way that we feel internally well it's

well I mean so if um if we just look at

how things are happening here's here's

what the anatomy tells us that when the

brain makes a guess that guess starts as

a motor plan starts as a visceral motor

plan and a skeletal motor plan so heart

rate changes breathing changes blood

pressure changes and potentially

skeletal muscle movement right and

literal copy

literal copies efferent copies of those

signals are sent to they propagate to

the sensory areas telling the brain

telling those neurons this is the last

time we made this in this context when

this other stuff just happened the like

this temporal context right the and we

made these movements here is what we saw

next here is what we felt next here's

what we smelled next so yeah I think of

this so the image that Pops in my mind

and we should explain to people what

efference copy is um in neuroscience and

neuro Anatomy uh the connection to a

structure is called an aarant with an A

and the connections out from a structure

are called the eer but the way I was say

it doesn't even matter it's just

basically the point here is that in our

experience in our in the way the brain

your brain conjures an experience okay

and and that experience is that you feel

something first you see something you

feel something you act that's not what's

happening what's happening is your brain

is preparing the action first and the

feeling what and your experience comes

from that action preparation so it's a

copy it's like literally you have axons

that are sending motor signals down the

the you know brain stem to the spinal

cord and literal copies of those axons

like those axons have branches that

collateral branches that just send axons

other places the same signal that is

being sent to your spinal cord to move

stuff in your body that same signal is

being sent to other neurons in the brain

as predictions of the sensations that

are going to happen in a second from now

a moment from now probably faster than a

second but you know in a couple

milliseconds if you move and so yes it

is the case that what you feel is linked

to what you do and what you do is linked

to what you feel but not in this simple

mechanistic way that that

neuroscientists and psychologists have

been using

forever you it's not like you are you

are you you're probed by a stimulus you

you see something you hear something and

then you process it and evaluate it and

then you react to it no that's not

what's happening what's actually

happening under the hood is that based

on how things are right now your brain

makes a guess or some guesses and those

guesses start as motor

plans and the consequence of those motor

plans are predicted Sensations and then

of course sensory signals are coming

from the sensory surfaces and they s and

here's the really here's to me the

really the most mind-boggling thing

about this whole

explanation if your Sensory neurons in

your sensory areas are already so

they're firing the the the the action

potentials the spiking has changed based

on these prepared motor movements these

are sensory

predictions and you know when I give

talks and on my website I have some cool

examples of of how this works you can

experience it yourself you you know

start to experience uh you know you hear

things that aren't there you you feel

vibrations in your chest that aren't

there because your brain is predicting

it's predicting these

Sensations so let's say the sensations

come the the sensory signals I should

say let me so the sensory signals from

the sensory surfaces of the body make it

to the

brain if you have if your neurons are

already firing in a way to anticipate

those signals those signals just confirm

the firing and then they're done they

don't make it any further into the

brain so when you're predicting

well your experience is constructed

completely by your brain the signals

from the sensory surfaces are there just

to confirm irm

or to change the signals so if there's

things you didn't

anticipate then those um errors of

prediction those are the signals that

are propagated and become compressed and

stuff and we have a special name for

that in science we call it learning you

know Andy Clark is a philosopher who

writes a lot about prediction predicting

brain and and so on and he talks about

normal uh everyday experience as being a

controlled

hallucination I think that's true yeah I

subscribe to that um it's a fairly

adaptive in most circumstances

controlled hallucination but but it has

its limitations and it I mean what we

were talking about um if I could be a

somewhat of a summary neuron you can

tell me if my summary is too coarse um

is that first of all that the neural

systems and the Brain let's just call it

the nervous system because we're talking

about brain and body are incredibly

Dynamic there's a bunch of inputs those

inputs gets are incredibly elaborate

they get summarized the summary prepares

the body for a certain action that's a

motor commands preo commands and then

some action may or may not be taken but

already as soon as an action is taken or

not taken the whole state of the neural

system is different it's changed as a

consequence of just of what just

happened now of course when people hear

that and when I hear that indeed I I

feel like wow it's a tough system to

study because these are dynamical neural

systems and and we have the technology

to put people in functional scanners and

look at what lights up so to speak we

have the capacity to ask people how they

feel based on questionnaires but you can

imagine that's incredibly crude so then

you give them liyer scales of you know

rate from 1 to 10 how happy or sad you

are and so you're adding some some depth

and dimensionality to it but it's

incredibly crude it's nothing like real

experience and if somebody's more verbal

less verbal maybe they somaticize more

or less I mean an example comes to mind

that you know occasionally you learn

from social media which often I learn

from social media and someone once said

I don't think in thoughts I think in

feels and I thought okay great you're

probably also from Northern California

and I said wait Andrew stop being so

judgmental what do you mean and I asked

and they said I experience emotions in

their mind first as a as a bodily State

then the label comes much later that's

not how it works for me it feels fairly

more integrated brain and body for me

but other people started chiming in no I

think of emotion I experience emotions

clearly as a verbal label it's all in

their head and so you start to realize

that we might all be encoding The World

Slightly differently or very differently

and it's changing in time so then the

question becomes you know how what are

the anchor points in terms of our

understanding of emotions that we can

work with and and and the following

questions come to mind um neither you

nor I are clinicians as far as I know

I'm certainly not I was actually trained

as a clinician oh there you go I'm wrong

again but I haven't no no no but I mean

I haven't I haven't practiced in like

really gazillions of years okay well

you're you're well you're more than

qualified to answer the question I'm

about to ask which is to me there is a

great conflict of information in the

psychology Psychiatry and let's just

call it wellness and mental health space

which is when we are feeling lousy like

not good let's put veilance on it just

lousy I don't want in a state that we

we're having an emotion that we don't

want to

have there's an entire category of

information that says you need to feel

your feelings you need to feel your

feelings you need to acknowledge that

they're there you need to go into the

feeling maybe even full catharsis you

need to amplify the feelings until they

quote unquote leave your body after all

Steve Job was into scream therapy and

helped himun his anger who knows you get

these examples he's probably the worst

example because it seemed like he was

angry a lot from what I hear but then

there's another category of thought

which is no you need to use your ability

to top down control inhibition of the

cortex on Lower structures again I'm

deliberately using crude language here

to say wait you know this is an emotion

emotions pass this is not real this is

just a limited set of uh High

dimensionality stuff that's been

summarized and you know what like I

don't need to feel this way I can make

myself feel differently maybe I'll go

for a run in fact I always feel better

after I go for a run so even this

question as simple as should we feel our

our

feelings or should we not feel our

feelings and of course you would hope

that this would be answered

appropriately such that people don't go

harm other people or themselves but but

but assuming that they're not going to

harm other people eles verbally or

physically then you really get yourself

into a bit of a pickle like we don't

understand what to do with

emotions ours or other people's because

clearly we don't understand emotions per

se so I would say I'm going to answer

your question and then I want to also

pick it the word the I want to pick it

an

assumption um because it it's come up

actually a couple of times and there's

something super important in your

descriptions that I just want to pull

out for for the listeners because I

think it's really important and you're

doing it very naturally but I think some

people it would be it just Bears

commenting on so let me just deal with

the question of should we feel our

feelings or use our words you know we

say to little kids use your words like

don't throw a tantrum right um but then

there was also this other feeling oh

just feel it's important to feel and you

don't want to get it have it be pent up

and you or use your body and like and

like hit a pillow I mean there's scream

therapy bite the pillow SC pill tear the

pillow's you can p $5,000 for a week

ofing this and they'll tell you you're

going to feel better at the end so the

answer there is it's the wrong question

like flexibility is important for

everything always right so um first of

all you don't have you don't have

emotions in your body your body doesn't

keep the score you know yeah great book

title because it's super catchy but with

all due respect to I think the important

work of Vander I think it oversimplified

and led people to believe that their

back pain was

trauma and that all trauma is somatized

and it's not no it's not but I I would

go further and say like first of all

your body does keep the score your brain

keeps the score your body is the

scorecard that's super important and he

has done really important work but his

explanations for why things work is

scientific ific Al

incorrect it just is because we don't

feel things in our bodies we everything

we feel we feel in our brains we don't

see in our eyes we see in our brains of

course we need our eyes but we don't see

in our eyes just like if you you know

pinch your your hand with you know take

skin and pinch between you know two two

fingers the skin you don't feel that

actually in your hand you feel it in

your brain that's the magic of the brain

in a sense so what I would say is it

um uh it depends on the situation and

what your goal

is um sometimes it is useful to use your

words and sometimes it is useful to go

for a

run it just depends on what your goal is

well in both those cases you're you're

uh that you gave both those examples

excuse me you're um it's a way of

Shifting off the emotion I guess what

I'm asking is well sometimes you don't

want to shift off the emotion sometimes

the mo sometimes the wisest thing to do

is live in the emotion that is you know

sometimes uh

discomfort sometimes when something

feels bad it doesn't mean something is

wrong it just might mean that you're

doing something hard well earlier I

wrote when you talking about the the

broad categorization of emotions I I

wrote down you know simple as good when

it feels good you're like I just feel

really great but then when things feel

lousy that's where Nuance could be

beneficial yeah AB absolutely because

we're because emotions are recipes for

Action when you go from be feeling bad

to feeling angery or sad it's a recipe

for action and I would also say and this

just this is an analogy but I I sort of

I stand by it um you know uh when I was

um I had major back surgery a couple

years ago and I know something about

chronic pain it's not my area of study

but I know something about it because

I've I've and reanalyze some some data

sets and I've read a lot so I'm not an

expert but you know I have ideas and I

thought to myself well I just I don't

want to end up with chronic back pain so

what I did was I made sure after I got

through the first couple of weeks where