From the Archives: Lisa Feldman Barrett || Surprising Truths about the Human Brain

[@vagabondcaleb8915]

Oh boy! What a guest! Can't wait to start listening!

[@charlespowell2491]

Dr. Kaufman does such a great job with the narrative. Very insightful. What a great podcast. Definitely worth watching!

[@traceysheneman8652]

"The mind is what the brain does." ✔️

[@AtypicalPaul]

Great conversation. Very interesting. I'm searching for how to rewire my own brain. I'm battling agoraphobia, extreme panic attacks, and arfid. Due to some health issues, I used to get sick every time I ate, and so I became afraid to eat. I have really struggled with gaining weight and eating enough for energy. At one point, I was 89 lbs, and I'm 5 10" I have gotten up to 118lbs now. I still have a ways to go to be in a healthy weight. I am so afraid to eat and don't know how to re program my brain to not be. I have worked with many therapists, and it has helped some but not enough. Every day is so hard and many are scary. I need to find a way to change my brain. I'm terrified of traffic, going away from my house, eating, breathing heavy as it mimics a panic attack and storms. I am very jumpy and find my baseline to be like walking a tight rope while having things thrown at me. Always on edge and expecting something else bad to happen. Needless to say but I had a traumatic childhood and young adult life that has helped create this existence of fear and expectation of more pain.

[@ginafrancis4950]

Yes! Fascinating!

[@MichaelJooschi]

it sounds reasonable to say that kids, adults are contextual in their emotions.. that the brain simulation, its predictive process, has strong connection to how they express emotions.. the older people get the more likely it seems their laughter, anger, fear, etc is connected to cultural fenomena in a strong manner, to culture specific jokes, dangers, political movements, entertainment etc.. however i feel that this simulative capacity would be very weak at young age.. just like the seperation of self and other is very weak in young children.. they have strong emotions, highly intense, but weak reasoning power, and weak sense of seperation from the world.. which is why people love them so much, their sincerity in presence and in expression moreover their seems to be still a universality in the basic emotions, even while affected by context.. every child is likely to feel positive emotions when being breastfed.. or when the mother holds the child.. or with loud noises, or feeling the skin burn while touching fire.. they might experience it in a different way, perhaps, that is, a different joy, a different anger.. and the older they get the more unique to the personality those emotions would turn out.. the more different the taste of that emotion.. similar to the how faces are alike, but the older people get, the more pronounced their features, and the more distinct they appear.. so there is a possibility of two adults to experience in the exact same way (to have a very similar brain, simulating similar) but it would be more likely in children who are yet to form a strong self centered prediction system (strong as in: consistent) so it seems to me, though i agree with the simulation theory, where the brain creates the reality of one's experience.. being indirectly affected by sensory data.., that this does not exclude universality of emotion.. or universality of emotion in certain contexts.. due to evolutionary influences perhaps.. besides that, it would be interesting to incorporate the effect of the human biosphere, its microbiome and virome, on chemistry of the body, and by that to the emotional expression and experience of the individual.. also i would find it interesting to view all this in the context of the collective unconsciouss, the type proposed by karl jung.. and reincarnation (we are perhaps too biased by our belief in a definite death or in heaven or hell).. but that might be too far out lol... though it fascinates me.. it might very well be, that the more humanity progresses in time, the more common emotion becomes, the more universal culturally, perhaps affected by the collective unconsiouss or reincarnation, perhaps, by a cultural feedback loop .. perhaps the internet allready has created a greater universality of context in relation to biological inclinations towards emotion..

[@MichaelJooschi]

i am only speculating though.. by intuition.. i as much as lisa, distrust the idea of universality, .. after all, the work of paul ekman was based on a question of universality of brain function and motor functions beforehand , but we do not even understand the brain, how it exists at the chemical level or at the quantum level.. we might be too much part the experiment to be able to extract reliable results from it.. our own brains might be affecting how we perceive our brains and motor functions.. and both the dream of universality or absense of it might be creating a cognitive bias.. we might underestimate the capacity of the brain for self deception... the more free people are from the evolutionary pressures of need for food, for shelter, etc.. the more free the brain is to dream up a world which is not destroyed by experience... or even by collected data from instruments like the hadron collider or microscopes or telescopes, or AI.. maybe that is a curse, but maybe it is a gift... we may be underestimating our capacity to simulate together this world, perhaps a paradise.. where people are free to be themselves.. perhaps the weakest element in adulthood, is the lack of imagination for creating such a world.. i find it great, to see that science, is able to deconstruct its own dogmatism.. and thereby the violence that could ensue from that dogma (the so called fact-superior people who 'know' how everyone 'should' be) scientists are always in danger of moving from the factual, to what 'must' be.. defending their 'proven fact', even if experiments show otherwise.. even though there are benefits to defending this position (defining quantum mechanical weirdness benefited immensly from the objections of einstein) when experiments are ambiguous themselves.. ultimately the scientist should be ready to question his positions even if it hurts his ego..

[@MichaelJooschi]

blah blah blah