Top Neuroscientist: Anxiety Is A Predictive Error In The Brain! Heres The Proof Your Brain Is Faking Trauma! Your Whole Life Might Be A Prediction!

Lisa Feldman Barrett emphasizes the brain's integral role in prediction and meaning-making, addressing how it intricately intertwines past experiences with sensory input to prepare for future events and form subjective experiences.

The Brain Predicts and Prepares for Future Events

Brain Predicts and Adjusts Actions Based on Experience and Sensory Input

Feldman Barrett discusses the brain's predictive operation, asserting that it forecasts future needs and actions based on past information. This prediction is a fusion of memory, such as trauma, and is employed in every action. The brain is constantly preparing for the subsequent move, deciding to alter heart rate, breathing, or eye movement. The sensory present is used to select which memory to build upon, illustrating that past experience significantly shapes cognitive and emotional responses.

Predictive Process Underlies Perceptions, Thoughts, and Emotions

The predictive process of the brain underpins our perceptions, thoughts, and emotions, as stated by Feldman Barrett. She details the brain's capacity to create an expected reality, citing the example of imagining eating an apple, which activates neural alterations similar to actually eating the fruit. Even without sensory inputs, the brain engages in predictive actions such as mouth-watering in anticipation of taste. It improves performance through predictive efficiency and is influenced by individual and cultural contexts.

Emotions and Mental States Are Brain Responses to Environments

Brain Merges Sensory Input and Memories to Form Subjective Experiences

According to Feldman Barrett, every experience is crafted from elements of the past and current sensory input. She explains the significance of diverse minds forming different mental lives based on varied cultural and physical environments. The brain merges input and recollections to form a personalized understanding of events, as evidenced by the phenomenon of chronic pain, which can linger if the brain's predictions are not updated after an illness or injury.

Physical Sensations Vary By Experience and Context

Feldman Barrett elucidates how the brain attributes meaning to physical states, with anxiety sometimes signaling merely uncertainty or determination, depending on the context. She describes the brain's forecasting abilities as they relate to pain, explaining that the interpretation of these sensations can persist due to a lesser budget allocated to learning during recovery. The brain also anticipates sensations that have yet to occur, exemplified by the concept of thirst, where the act of drinking water is predicted to quench thirst before the ef ...

Recent discussions highlight the intricate connections between the body's physical processes and mental states, with particular focus on metabolism, hormones, inflammation, and the concept of the brain's "body budget."

Brain's Connection to Body and Physiological Processes

Impact of Metabolism, Hormones, and Inflammation on Mood and Cognition

Lisa Feldman Barrett underlines the brain's largely unconscious regulation of the body, where our internal processes remain under the radar of our awareness. She suggests that the sensory signals from the body assist the brain in shaping our actions and experiences. Although not directly mentioning hormones and inflammation, she implies that these factors—along with metabolism which is particularly costly energetically—significantly shape our mental experiences.

Sheldon Cohen's psychoimmunology experiments revealed that the state of the immune system is key in whether an individual becomes symptomatic after virus exposure, linking the brain and immune system to physical responses to illness. Barrett adds that recovering from illnesses can tax metabolic resources, impacting the brain's learning and updating mechanisms.

Disruptions in Brain's "Body Budget" Regulation May Impact Mental Health

Depression Linked To Metabolic Imbalances and Adaptation Issues

Barrett sheds light on how the brain's role in regulating bodily resources—a process she terms body budgeting—is critical. Symptoms of depression, such as distress, fatigue, concentration difficulties, and context insensitivity, point to a decline in metabolic output. Conversely, symptoms like inflammation suggest increased metabolic costs, with a significant portion of depressed individuals suffering from inflammatory issues.

Barrett extends the discussion to everyday stressors, explaining how, for example, living in a stressful environment without dietary changes could lead to significant weight gain—a demonstration of the link between psychological stress and metabolic adjustment. Serotonin and [restricted term], key targets of antidepressants, are implicated as metabolic controllers, just as [restricted term] and serotonin. Barrett illustrates these connections with personal anecdotes, discussing how her daughter's experience with depression and menstrual pain intersects with the use of birth control pills—a metabolic regulator.

Brain Predictions Shaped by Body State and Past Experiences

Brain Anticipates Needs Using Bodily Signals

Barrett's framework proposes that the brain uses signals from the body's physiology—such as a ...

Lisa Feldman Barrett along with other voices discuss various strategies on how to gain control over one's life and mental health through a multi-faceted approach involving novel experiences, prediction errors, and dynamic conceptions of identity and emotions.

Updating Brain Predictions Through Novel Situations and "Prediction Errors"

Feldman Barrett describes how engagement in activities like high-intensity interval training can disrupt the brain's expectations by presenting it with novel situations, termed as "prediction errors." By challenging the brain to adjust to new, unexpected movements, these errors can help with recalibrating thoughts and overcoming fears. Small, manageable exposures to the object of fear, like avoiding social media for a day, create a series of "prediction errors" that update the brain's predictions and actions. Exposure therapy is highlighted as a classic example of this learning method. Feldman Barrett recommends setting a schedule that allows optimal dosing with prediction errors to change habits, as she planned for herself after back surgery to prevent chronic pain.

"Body Budget" Management: Sleep, Nutrition, Social Connection, Lifestyle for Mental Well-Being

Discussing the concept of the "body budget," Feldman Barrett notes that vital functions, growth and repair, and effortful activities all draw from an individual’s energy pool. Stress is a sign that the brain expects more energy expenditure. Since energy production is finite daily, psychosocial stress or disease can deplete what's available for other activities. Feldman Barrett underlines the importance of sleep, hydration, and exercise for employee well-being and productivity, urging leaders to take these factors seriously. She relays how her daughter's depressive symptoms prompted a comprehensive approach to address her overall well-being, focusing on lifestyle changes like improved sleep cycles, nutrition, exercise, omega supplements, and systemic inflammation reduction. Social connection is also essential—Feldman Barrett references studies that show the metabolic benefits of positive social interactions, alluding to their role in managing one's mental and physical health.

Identity and Emotions as Dynamic Constructs Empower Change

Barrett posits that individuals can change their feelings and identities by amassing new experiences that become automatic predictions for the future. This is a shift from a fixed identity to one shaped continually by context and experience. Barrett encourages changing what is remembered or predicted, and even the sensory present, to alter identity. Regarding coping with trauma, Barrett suggests that, while one is not responsible for the trauma, they can change their response to it, thus altering their feelings of trauma. Steven Bartlett iterates this viewpoint by discussing how people attribute meaning to past events, sometimes based on societal cues and others’ interpretations. Barrett emphasizes the brain does not intrinsically assign emotional meaning to sen ...