Lisa Feldman Barrett

Now, a lot of people don't realize that they're going through life with their brains already deciding about their failure.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, a couple months ago, just published a really beautiful paper, excruciating detail, showing that categorization is baked into the brain.

So we usually think we'd collect data Then we analyze the data, and then we figure out the answer based on that.

But what they found was when you show up to any situation, you're already showing up with the past having influenced you.

And it leads to some interesting questions that you can now choose how fine grained your selfhood is.

Um, is it, um, just good and bad or is it sort of, you know, um, you're embarrassed, frightened, angry, caring, curing, whatever, um, you know, have a very fine grained and it leads to all sorts of interesting notions about, um, alexithymia and dyslexithymia if you've just got good versus bad for example I reckon I don't feel good versus bad not a very expressive model it may be a simple model and therefore may have the greatest model evidence if indeed you can be in a world where you're just good or feeling good or feeling bad but generally speaking for things like you and me it's much more fine grained and then you start to think about how that carving emotional space at its joints in the right way, the most simple way, but still retains a degree of expressiveness, relates to sort of cardinal theories of emotion, you know, the kind that people like Lisa Feldman Barrett talk about, or If you lean more towards people like Mark Soames, you'd be looking at sort of the synthesis that people like Panksepp brought to the table in terms of needs and affects and drives that basically are a reflection of our generative models of ourselves or ourselves in different situations.

Does that answer your question? Yeah, no, that's

fascinating.

ahead, Mike.

I was just going to say for people who might be listening who don't know the long relationship that Creek has with his favorite neuroscientist, Lisa Feldman Barrett is the LFB that he was referring to talking about that neuroscience.

That's okay.

I'm fine to bat a little clean up for you.

So in today's episode, we're going to talk about some developmental expectations, why a child's developing neurocircuitry matters for self-regulation.

this whole idea that, um, came out of the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett, which is what she calls the theory of constructed emotions.

Um, and so if we, if we use that theoretical lens and we're looking at, well, where did these emotions come from? And that's, she takes a different approach than Yak Pinksep who had more of a biological, um, You're everyone's born with these neuro circuits.

So she takes a little different approach than that theoretical model.

All of these are going to influence the development So what does that mean for how emotions are constructed when we're talking about children and emotional development in children and how do, and they're always having new experiences and the younger they are, the newer the experiences are.

Right.

And so that's where I found that this article by Holman, Zoof and Feldman Barrett, which I, um, put in the, the description for today's episode, and the title of it is Emotion Words, Emotion Concepts, and Emotional Development in Children.

And kind of in a nutshell, it's a very extensive article, but in a nutshell, for the purposes of today's live stream episode or podcast episode, whichever one you're listening to, then what they propose is in a nutshell, is that children's brain development begins with developing emotion concepts based on their internal experiences and their observations of others' use of emotion words and responding to those things going on, including cultural nuances learned in those experiences, which is really kind of fascinating.

Welcome to The Science of Perception Box.

This week, our guest is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett.

As Dr. Barrett's work shows, emotions are physical sensations that meet a story in our mind, a story constructed from our historical context, past events, and beliefs we took on when we were very young, which means no matter how powerful we feel something inside of us, that emotion is an interpretation, not objective fact.

When we see that, our entire world begins to shift.

I was Snow White in elementary school, and I was very nervous to get on stage in front of all, you know, this big audience.

And I remember my mom said to me, like, "Those butterflies you feel, it's not nervousness, it's g- it's excitement." And when I reframed that, it changed my perspective.

So Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your research and your perspective on emotion.

I think it's gonna be really interesting for our audience because there's so many theories of emotion out there, so really appreciate you sharing your perspective.

Yeah, how do you stop research and just do it? So there's a neuroscientist who I talk to in the book whose work I really, really admire.

Her name is Lisa Feldman Barrett, and she's probably best known for a book called How Emotions Are Made.

Hmm.

But the book of hers that I read that really sort of changed how I think about a lot of things is a book called Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

Both of those are true, but there is this sort of false dichotomy that's being, that's, that sometimes shows up in the way we talk about it.

Either it's all body or it's all story, and there's sort of nothing in between.

And Lisa Feldman Barrett's work really helped me think through some more productive, for me, ways of thinking about post-traumatic stress disorder.

So something that's important, a piece of context that's important to know, is two years after getting turned away from the behavioral health crisis unit, I was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, what's called collateral or vicarious PTSD.

So we're looking at how the brain has made meaning out of past experiences, what's going on in the moment.

And also if we're kind of following this idea of The Theory of Constructed Emotions by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Then we're also looking at this idea of the role of culture and the cultural context in which meaning is made about situations, about emotions, and about responses and behaviors, right? All of that gets stored away and the brain uses this information to figure out, well, what do I need to do next? So If we're looking at from that standpoint of neuroscience, so we're thinking about the brain is making meaning of what's going on and predicting what needs to be happening next.

And that behavior, that information gives you data as the play therapist.

Neuroscience gives a lot of appreciation for our human experiences and explains a lot.

And I normally said, Lisa Feldman Barrett, I appreciate her for a few things that I discovered in her writing.

First of all, that our emotions are not reactions.

We are not reacting to the world.