0:00

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

0:02

where we revisit past episodes

0:04

for the most potent and

0:06

actionable science-based tools for mental

0:09

health, physical health, and performance.

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My name is Andrew Huberman

0:13

and I'm a professor of

0:15

neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford

0:18

School of Medicine. So let's talk

0:20

about emotions. Emotions are a fascinating

0:22

and vital aspect of our life

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experience. It's fair to say that

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emotions make up most of what

0:28

we think of as our experience

0:30

of life. Even the things we

0:32

do, our behaviors and the places

0:35

we go and the people we

0:37

end up encountering in our life, all

0:39

of that really funnels into our

0:41

emotional perception of what those things

0:44

mean, whether or not they made

0:46

us happy or sad or depressed

0:48

or lonely. we're all inspiring. Now

0:50

one thing that is absolutely true

0:53

is that everyone's perception of emotion

0:55

is slightly different, meaning your idea

0:57

of happy is very likely different

0:59

than my idea of what a

1:02

state of happiness is. And we

1:04

know this also for color vision,

1:06

for instance, even though the cells

1:08

in your eye and my eye

1:10

that perceive the color red are

1:13

identical right down to the genes

1:15

that they express. we can be

1:17

certain based on experimental evidence in

1:19

what are called psychophysical studies that

1:21

your idea of the most intense red is

1:24

going to be very different than my

1:26

idea of the most intense red if

1:28

we were given a selection of ten

1:30

different reds and asked which one is

1:32

most intense which one looks most red

1:34

and that seems crazy you would think

1:36

that something as simple as color would

1:38

be universal and yet it's not. And so

1:40

we need to agree at the outset

1:43

that emotions are complicated and yet they

1:45

are tractable. They can be understood. And

1:47

today we're going to talk about a

1:49

lot of tools to understand what emotions

1:51

are for you to understand what your

1:53

emotional states mean and what they don't

1:55

mean. And in doing that, that will

1:57

allow you to place value. on whether

2:00

or not you should hold an emotional

2:02

state as true or not true, whether

2:04

or not it has meaning or it

2:06

doesn't, as well as whether or not

2:08

the emotions of others are important

2:10

to you in a given context.

2:12

We're going to talk a lot

2:14

about development. In fact, we're going

2:17

to center a lot of our

2:19

discussion today around infancy and puberty.

2:21

We're also going to talk about

2:23

tools for enhancing one's emotional range

2:25

and for navigating difficult emotional situations.

2:27

I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'm

2:29

not a therapist, but I do

2:31

have some background in psychology. Today

2:33

I'm going to be drawing from

2:35

the psychology greats, not me, but

2:37

from the greats of psychology who

2:39

studied emotion, who studied emotional development, and

2:42

linking that to the neuroscience of emotion,

2:44

because nowadays we understand a lot about

2:46

the chemicals and the hormones and the

2:49

neural circuits in the brain and body

2:51

that underlie emotion. So while there's no

2:53

one single universally true theory of emotion,

2:55

at the intersection of many of the

2:58

existing theories, there are really some ground

3:00

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3:02

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4:42

want to understand emotions, we have to

4:44

look at where emotions first develop. And

4:46

the rule that every good neuroananimous knows

4:49

is that if you want to understand

4:51

what a part of the brain does,

4:53

you have to address two questions. You

4:55

have to know what connections does that

4:58

brain area make. And you need to

5:00

know. what's called the developmental origin of

5:02

that structure. What are the brain areas

5:05

for emotion? And nowadays there's a lot

5:07

of debate about this. For years, it

5:09

was thought that there might be circuits,

5:12

meaning connections in the brain that generate

5:14

the feeling of being happy, or circuits

5:16

that generate the feeling of being sad,

5:19

etc. That's been challenged. And yet, I

5:21

think there's good evidence for circuits in

5:23

the brain, such as limbic circuits and

5:25

other circuits, that shift our overall states.

5:28

or our overall level of alertness or

5:30

calmness, or whether or not they bias

5:32

us toward viewing the outside world or

5:35

paying more attention to what's going on

5:37

inside our bodies. But the important thing

5:39

to understand is that emotions do arise

5:42

in the brain and body, and if

5:44

we want to understand how emotions work,

5:46

we have to look how emotions are

5:48

built, and they are built during infancy,

5:51

adolescence, and puberty. And then it continues

5:53

into adulthood, but the groundwork is laid

5:55

down early in development when we are

5:58

small children. born into this world without

6:00

really any understanding of the things around

6:02

you. Now there are two ways that

6:05

you can interact with the world and

6:07

you're always doing them more or less

6:09

to some degree at the same time.

6:12

Those are in terraception,

6:14

paying attention to what's going on inside

6:16

you, what you feel internally an

6:18

extraaception, paying attention to what's

6:20

going on. outside you. Hold

6:22

that in mind please because

6:24

the fact that you're both

6:26

in terracepting and ex terracepting

6:28

is true for your entire

6:30

life and it sets the

6:32

foundation for understanding emotions. It's

6:34

absolutely critical. As an infant

6:37

you didn't have any knowledge of

6:39

what you needed. You didn't understand

6:41

hunger, you didn't understand cold or

6:44

heat or any of that. When you

6:46

needed something you experienced that as anxiety.

6:48

you would feel an increase in alertness

6:50

if you had to use the bathroom.

6:52

You would feel an increase in alertness

6:54

if you were hungry. And you would

6:56

vocalize, you would cry out, you would

6:58

act agitated, you might coo, you might

7:01

do a number of different things, and

7:03

then your caregiver, whoever that might have

7:05

been, would respond to that. So this

7:07

is actually really important to understand that

7:09

a baby... when you were a baby

7:11

and when I was a baby, we

7:13

didn't have any sense of the

7:16

outside world except that it responded

7:18

to our acts of anxiety essentially.

7:20

All developmental psychologists agree that babies

7:22

lack the ability to make cognitive

7:25

sense of the outside world. But

7:27

in this feeling of anxiety and

7:29

registering one's own internal state and

7:32

then crying out to the outside

7:34

world either through crying or subtle

7:36

vocalizations or even just cooing making

7:39

some noise. we start to develop

7:41

a relationship with the outside world

7:43

in which our internal states, our

7:46

shifts in anxiety, start to

7:48

drive requests and people come

7:50

and respond to those requests. And

7:52

this gets to the basis of

7:55

what emotions are about, which are

7:57

emotions are really about forming bonds.

7:59

and being able to predict things in

8:02

the world. And at this point, I

8:04

actually just want to pause and mention

8:06

a really interesting tool that is trying

8:08

to address this question of what are

8:10

emotions and what do they consist of

8:13

that you can use if you like.

8:15

This is an app I didn't develop

8:17

it, I don't have any relationship to

8:19

them, but the app was developed by

8:21

people at Yale, and it's called Mood

8:24

Meter. What they're trying to do is

8:26

put more nuance, more subtlety on our words

8:28

and our language for. for emotions

8:30

and be able to allow you to

8:32

predict how you're going to feel in the

8:34

future. I'm on the app right now and

8:37

I know you can't see this, but it's

8:39

called mood meter. You know, it says to

8:41

me, hi Andrew, how are you right now?

8:43

And I clicked a little tab that says

8:45

I feel and I can either pick high

8:47

energy and unpleasant. high energy and pleasant

8:49

low energy unpleasant or low energy pleasant

8:51

and I would say right now I

8:53

feel high energy pleasant so I just

8:56

revealed to you how I feel so

8:58

I click on that and then it

9:00

gives you a gallery of colors and

9:02

you just move your finger to the

9:04

location where you think it matches most

9:06

and as you do that little words

9:08

pop up so say motivated cheerful inspired

9:10

I would say I'm feeling right now

9:12

cheerful so you click that and then

9:14

you just go to the next window

9:16

and it says what are you doing

9:18

and I this feels like play to

9:20

me, but I'm going to call it

9:22

work. And then that's it. And then

9:24

what it does is it basically starts

9:26

to collect data on you, you're giving

9:28

it information, and it starts to link

9:30

that to other features that you allow

9:32

it access to if you like, and

9:34

it starts helping you be able to

9:36

predict how you're going to feel at

9:38

different times a day. It points to

9:41

a couple really interesting features, which is

9:43

that we don't really have enough language

9:45

to describe all the emotional states, and

9:47

yet there's some core truths to

9:49

what makes up an emotion. This

9:51

can really help people, kids and

9:53

adults, understand better what they're feeling

9:55

and why, and when best to

9:58

engage in certain activities and and

10:00

thankfully when best to avoid certain

10:02

activities too. So the way this

10:04

works is the following. You need

10:06

to ask yourself at any point,

10:08

you could do this right now

10:10

if you like, what's your level

10:12

of autonomic arousal? Autonomic arousal is

10:14

just the continuum, the range of

10:16

alert to calm. So if you're

10:18

in a panic right now, you

10:21

are like 10 out of 10

10:23

on the arousal scale. If you're

10:25

a sleep, you're probably not. comprehending

10:27

what I'm saying, although maybe a

10:29

little bit, but let's say you're

10:31

very drowsy, you might be at

10:33

a one or a two. And

10:35

then there's this other axis, this

10:37

other question, which is what we

10:39

call valence. Now valence is a

10:41

value. Do you feel good or

10:43

bad? I would say I feel

10:45

pretty good right now on a

10:47

scale of one to ten. I'm

10:49

like a, I don't know, I

10:52

feel like a seven. So I'm

10:54

alert and I feel pretty good

10:56

and I feel like. intercepting and

10:58

how much we are exterocepting. All

11:00

right, so how much our attention

11:02

is focused internally on what we're

11:04

feeling and how much it's focused

11:06

externally. And this is always going

11:08

to be in a dynamic balance.

11:10

So for instance, if you're really,

11:12

really stressed, oftentimes that puts you

11:14

in a position to be really

11:16

in touch with what's going on

11:18

in your body, if you start

11:21

having a lot of somatic, a

11:23

lot of bodily sensations like your

11:25

heart is beating so fast that

11:27

you can't ignore it. then you're

11:29

really strongly interreceptive. So these three

11:31

things, how alert or sleepy you

11:33

are, that's one, how good or

11:35

bad you feel, that's two, and

11:37

then whether or not most of

11:39

your attention is directed outward or

11:41

whether or not it's directed inward.

11:43

And much of what we call

11:45

emotions are made up by those

11:47

three things. Let's return to the

11:49

infant. There's the baby and the

11:52

crib. It's mostly interrecepting. As caregivers

11:54

bring it what it needs, milk.

11:56

diaper changes, etc. A warm blanket

11:58

if it's cold, pull off the

12:00

blanket when the big Fussing and

12:02

it's too warm because babies get

12:04

too warm also, it starts to

12:06

exterocept. The baby starts to look

12:08

into the outside world and start

12:10

making predictions. It starts wondering how

12:12

much it needs to cry or

12:14

predicting, well, if I cry like

12:16

a little bit, then mom comes

12:18

over and I get my milk.

12:21

Babies are starting to evaluate and

12:23

do all this, but they're not

12:25

doing it consciously. They're doing this

12:27

in order to relieve anxiety. As a

12:29

young creature, an infant, and a

12:31

young toddler, you were mainly focused

12:33

inward and you started to understand

12:35

what was going on outward as

12:37

a way of predicting what would

12:39

bring you relief, what would remove

12:41

your anxiety. And that's where the

12:43

fundamental rules of your experience, your

12:46

emotional experience were laid down. I'd

12:48

like to take a quick break

12:50

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14:00

now let's talk about what kind

14:02

of baby you were, because

14:04

that actually informs your emotionality

14:07

now. These are classic, they're

14:09

actually famous experiments done by

14:12

Bolby and Ainsworth. This is

14:14

this classic experiment of the,

14:17

what was called the strange

14:19

situation task in which, and I'm

14:21

describing it very coarsely here I

14:24

realize, but a mother and child

14:26

come into the laboratory. The

14:30

baby and the mother or father

14:32

play together for a bit

14:34

and then the mother leaves

14:36

for some period of time

14:38

and then comes back

14:40

and The research is

14:42

devoted to understanding the response

14:45

of the child when the

14:47

caretaker the mother of the

14:49

father returns Bolby and Ainsworth

14:52

and many of their scientific

14:54

offspring and colleagues

14:57

identified at least four patterns

14:59

that babies display when their

15:02

caretaker returns. And they group these

15:04

into group A, B, C, D,

15:06

so much so that the kids

15:08

were referred to as A babies,

15:10

B, babies, C, babies, or D

15:13

babies. The first babies are the

15:15

A babies. When their caretaker would

15:17

return, the infant would respond with

15:19

happiness, with what looked like delight.

15:22

They would go to the caretaker,

15:24

they seemed happy. These are referred

15:26

to as secure attached. kids. The

15:28

B babies, as they're called, were

15:31

less likely to seek comfort from

15:33

their caregiver when the caregiver

15:35

would return. So they would sometimes

15:37

continue to play with their toys

15:39

or they would be with the,

15:41

they had an adult in the

15:43

room while the parent was gone,

15:45

they would stay with them. These

15:47

were referred to as avoidant

15:50

babies. The C babies would

15:52

respond to the return of

15:54

the caregiver with Acts of annoyance,

15:56

they seem kind of angry. And

15:58

those were referred to as ambivalent

16:00

babies. And then the third category,

16:03

the D babies, were the disorganized

16:05

babies. The child avoided interactions with

16:07

everyone and their behavior didn't really

16:10

change whether or not the caregiver

16:12

was there or not. This work,

16:14

this classic work, opened up a

16:17

huge set of important questions that

16:19

related to what is the re-establishment

16:21

of the bond really about? I

16:24

mean, what's actually being figured out

16:26

here is not whether or not

16:28

there are four categories of babies.

16:31

That's interesting, but it presumably is

16:33

more interesting to focus on what

16:35

is it that defines a really

16:38

good bond, a secure attachment, or

16:40

an insecure attachment, or an avoidant

16:42

attachment. And the four things are

16:45

gaze, literally eye contact, vocalizations, so

16:47

what we say and how we

16:49

say and how we say it.

16:52

or emotion, so the way that

16:54

we express, you know, crying, smiling,

16:56

etc., and touch. But gaze, vocalization,

16:59

affect, and touch are really the

17:01

core of this thing that we

17:03

call social bonds and emotionality. And

17:06

it's clear from most all of

17:08

the theories of emotional health that

17:10

an ability to recognize when your

17:13

own internal state is being driven

17:15

primarily by external events. as important

17:17

for being able to emotionally regulate.

17:20

People who are constantly being yanked

17:22

around by the external happenings in

17:24

the world, you would say, are

17:27

emotionally labile. They are not in

17:29

control of their emotions. even if

17:31

they're calm all the time, if

17:34

that calmness only arrives because they're

17:36

in a placid environment and then

17:38

you put, you know, a cracker

17:41

in that environment and they freak

17:43

out, well then they're not really

17:45

calm. So how much the outside

17:48

environment disrupts your internal environment, has

17:50

everything to do with this balance

17:52

of interoception and extraoception, and it

17:55

very likely has roots in whether

17:57

or not you were secure attached

17:59

or insecure. disorganized or ambivalent as

18:01

a baby. So while we can't

18:04

travel back in time, there is

18:06

an exercise that you can do

18:08

to address at least in this

18:11

moment, whether or not you have

18:13

a bias for extra reception or

18:15

a bias for interoception. If you

18:18

close your eyes right now and

18:20

concentrate on the contact of any

18:22

portion of your body and trying

18:24

to bring as much of your

18:26

attention to your attention to That

18:29

point of contact is possible.

18:31

And then from there, you're

18:34

going to move your attention

18:36

even more deeply into, say,

18:39

the sensation of what's going

18:41

on in your gut. Are

18:44

you full? Are you empty?

18:46

Are you hungry? Are you

18:48

not? Is your heart beating?

18:51

At what's your heart beating?

18:53

At what rate? What's the

18:56

cadence of your breathing? Now

19:07

try and do something that for most

19:10

people actually is a little bit

19:12

harder, which is to purely extero-cept put

19:14

put your eyes or your ears

19:16

or both on Anything in your immediate

19:18

space. I would say look across the

19:21

room pick a panel on the

19:23

wall or You know a leg of

19:25

a table or something and try

19:27

and bring as much of your attention

19:29

to that as possible and Again,

19:32

I'll take about five seconds of

19:34

silence to allow you to

19:36

extero-cept Okay,

19:44

so what you probably found is

19:46

that you were able to do

19:48

that, but that some degree of

19:50

interception is maintained. It's hard to

19:52

place 100% of your attention on

19:54

something externally, unless it's really exciting,

19:56

really novel. If you've ever watched

19:58

a really great movie, presume... you're

20:00

extra accepting more than you're interocepting

20:02

until something exciting happens and then

20:05

you feel something you're actually tethering

20:07

your emotional experience to something external

20:09

and now you can also do

20:12

this dynamically you can decide to

20:14

focus internally and then externally you

20:16

can decide to split it 50%

20:19

50% or 7030. One can develop

20:21

you can develop a heightened ability

20:23

to do this and The power

20:25

of doing that is actually that

20:28

when you are in environments where

20:30

you feel like you're focused too

20:32

much internally and you'd like to

20:35

be focused more externally, you can

20:37

actually do that deliberately. But as

20:39

you notice, it takes work. These

20:42

exercises are really what are at

20:44

the core of these development of

20:46

emotional bonds because as we mentioned

20:49

before, these four things, the gaze,

20:51

vocalization, touch and affect, those... are

20:53

happening very dynamically. So if somebody

20:56

winks at you, you're paying attention

20:58

to their wink, but then you

21:00

also notice how you feel. This

21:02

is very dynamic. So if it

21:05

seems overwhelming to try and interocept

21:07

and exterocept and then shift the

21:09

balance, you do that all the

21:12

time. Your brain and nervous system

21:14

are fantastic at doing this. Now,

21:16

some people have a very hard

21:19

time breaking out of a very

21:21

hard time breaking out of their

21:23

exteroceptive mode. It's very interesting to

21:26

note the extent to which we

21:28

have biases in how interoceptive or

21:30

exteroceptive we are. Remember those three

21:33

axes that we talked about earlier.

21:35

You have valence, good or bad,

21:37

you have alertness, alert or calm,

21:39

and you have interoceptive or exteroceptive

21:42

bias. Early in development, you start

21:44

off with this interreceptive bias. You

21:46

are starting to develop expectations, predictions

21:49

about how the outside world is

21:51

going to work. And you are

21:53

trying to figure out the reliability

21:56

of outside events and people and

21:58

where things are reliable. When

22:00

people are reliable, we are able

22:02

to give up more of our

22:05

interoception. There's literally trust that our

22:07

interoceptive needs, our internal needs will

22:10

be met through bonds and actions

22:12

of others. This starts to veer

22:14

toward the discussion about neglect and

22:17

trauma. We are going to devote

22:19

entire episodes, probably an entire month,

22:21

to trauma and PTSD. those have

22:24

roots in what we're talking about

22:26

now. And it's important to internalize

22:28

and understand what we're talking about

22:31

now in order to get the most out

22:33

of those future conversations. So now I want

22:35

to just pause. Just shelve the discussion

22:38

about interoception, exteroception for a

22:40

moment. And I want to

22:42

talk about what is arguably

22:44

the second most, if not

22:46

equally important, aspect of your development.

22:48

as it relates to emotionality and

22:50

as it relates to this, what

22:53

I call trust, but this ability

22:55

to predict whether or not things

22:57

in the outside world are reliable

22:59

or not reliable in terms of

23:01

their ability to help you meet

23:04

your interoceptive needs. And that period

23:06

is puberty. I'd like to take a

23:08

quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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24:10

So up until now we've

24:12

been talking mainly about psychology,

24:15

not a lot of biology,

24:17

not a lot of mechanism,

24:19

and now we're going to

24:21

transition into talking about mechanism,

24:23

hormones, receptors, etc. Purity is

24:25

a absolute biological event. It

24:28

has a beginning. and it

24:30

has a specific definition, which

24:32

is the transition into reproductive

24:34

maturity. So there are a

24:36

lot of hormonal changes, yes,

24:38

there are also a lot

24:41

of brain changes, and most

24:43

people don't realize it, but

24:45

the brain changes occur first.

24:47

The brain turns on the

24:49

hormone systems that allow puberty

24:51

to all individuals is something

24:54

called kiss-pepton, K-I-S-P-E-P-T-I-T-I-N- Kispeptin. Kispeptin

24:56

is made by the brain

24:58

and it stimulates large amounts

25:00

of a different hormone called

25:02

GNRH, Gantotropin releasing hormone, to

25:04

be released. Gantotropin releasing hormone

25:07

then causes the release of

25:09

another hormone on something like

25:11

called lutenizing hormone or LH,

25:13

which travels in the bloodstream

25:15

and stimulates the ovaries of

25:17

females to produce estrogen and

25:20

the testes of males to

25:22

produce testosterone. Now this is

25:24

interesting because at this point,

25:26

the testes in males start

25:28

churning out tons of testosterone

25:30

in order to trigger the

25:33

development of secondary sexual characteristics,

25:35

body hair and all the

25:37

others, deepening a voice, etc.

25:39

And in females, estrogen is

25:41

doing various other things, breast

25:43

development, etc. So that's how

25:46

puberty happens at the biological

25:48

level, gets triggered by lepton

25:50

and kiss-pepton, and then this

25:52

young child is now... a

25:54

different creature to some to

25:56

some extent, not just because

25:59

they're reproduced. competent, of course,

26:01

but because there's a shift

26:03

in a number of the

26:05

things that underlie these social

26:07

bonds. There's a market shift

26:10

in a number of the things

26:12

that allow children and adults to

26:14

engage in predictive behavior about

26:17

each other and most of

26:19

what consumes the minds and

26:21

Waking hours of adolescents and

26:23

children who have gone through puberty

26:26

and going through puberty is Questions

26:28

about how they relate to social

26:30

structures who they can rely on

26:32

and how they can make reliable

26:35

predictions in the world now that

26:37

they have more agency that they

26:39

are physically Changed in fact you

26:41

could argue that puberty is the

26:44

fastest rate of maturation that you'll

26:46

go through at any point in

26:48

your life in terms of who

26:51

you are because your biology

26:53

is fundamentally changed at the

26:55

level of your brain and

26:57

your bodily organs, all your

26:59

organs, from the skin inward. So

27:01

I want to visit a little bit

27:03

of the research about some of the

27:06

core needs that occur during

27:08

puberty and adolescence. So there's

27:10

a terrific review article that

27:12

was published in the journal

27:14

Nature about the biology of

27:17

adolescence and puberty, as well

27:19

as... Some of the core needs and demands

27:21

that have to be met for successful

27:23

emotional maturation during that time We will

27:26

provide a link to that, but I

27:28

just want to highlight a few of

27:30

the things that they place in the

27:32

final table I don't want to go

27:35

through all the results right now because

27:37

you could do that on your own

27:39

if you like They mainly highlight a

27:41

lot of the changes in neurons and

27:43

neural circuits. For instance, I'll just highlight

27:46

one. There's a connection between the dopamine

27:48

centers in the brain and an area

27:50

of the brain that's involved

27:52

in emotion and dispersal. Dispersal

27:54

is very interesting. What you

27:56

observe in animals and humans

27:58

is that a... the end

28:00

of adolescence and during the transition

28:02

to puberty, both because of changes

28:05

in the brain and changes in

28:07

hormones, there's an intense desire on

28:10

the part of the child to

28:12

get further and further away from

28:14

primary caregivers. Mostly there's a desire

28:17

to start spending more time with

28:19

friends, more time with peers, and

28:21

less time with adults. So there's

28:24

something about these hormones that don't

28:26

just allow sexual reproduction. They don't

28:29

just change the brain in bodily

28:31

organs in the shape of us.

28:33

They also bias us towards dispersal

28:36

getting further and further away from

28:38

primary caregivers in particular. And what's

28:40

interesting is during puberty, there's increased...

28:43

connection, connectivity as we call it,

28:45

between the prefrontal cortex, which is

28:47

involved in motivation and decision-making, being

28:50

able to suppress action for making

28:52

long-term goals possible, as well as

28:55

dopamine centers, and the amygdala. So

28:57

there's this really broad integration and

28:59

testing, I think this is the

29:02

key element here, testing of circuits

29:04

for emotions and reward as they

29:06

relate to decisions. I think that's

29:09

useful because when you look at

29:11

the behavior of adolescents and teens,

29:14

they are testing social interactions, they

29:16

are testing physical interactions with the

29:18

world, oftentimes they're engaging in unsafe

29:21

behavior, and you can't just, I

29:23

would never try and justify that

29:25

with the underlying neurology, but the

29:28

neuroscience points to increased connectivity between

29:30

areas of the brain that are

29:32

related to emotionality and to threat

29:35

detection like the amygdala, but also

29:37

reward. So it's a time of

29:40

testing behaviorally, how different behaviors lead

29:42

to success or not. It's how

29:44

different behaviors lead to fear states

29:47

or not. You can start to

29:49

map the neurology onto some of

29:51

this emotional exploration. I do realize

29:54

that this episode is about emotions,

29:56

puberty is a time in which

29:59

the internal. of the person or

30:01

the animal is being sampled and

30:03

tested against different extraceptive events

30:05

only now they are able

30:08

to guide those events with

30:10

more agency. The child or

30:12

the adolescent is now able,

30:14

the teen really, is able

30:16

to now sample many many

30:19

more extraceptive events through behavior.

30:21

And so. adolescence and puberty

30:23

is really seen as the

30:25

period of development in which

30:27

one self samples for these

30:30

two elements that we talked about

30:32

at the beginning, which are how do

30:34

I form bonds and how do I

30:36

make predictions about what will make me

30:38

feel good at a level of interoception. But

30:40

in terms of the biology,

30:42

it's clear that there's this

30:44

stage of development where more

30:46

autonomy, more physical capability is

30:49

triggered by these hormone changes in

30:51

the brain. and these peptide changes

30:53

in the brain and body. And

30:56

that nonetheless brings us back to

30:58

the exact same model that we

31:00

started with an infancy of alert

31:02

or calm, feel good or feel bad,

31:04

primarily exterocepting,

31:06

primarily interocepting. So I keep going

31:08

back to this, I'm sort of

31:10

like a repeating record on that,

31:12

because the same core algorithm, the

31:14

same core function is at play.

31:16

throughout the lifespan. And that's a

31:18

useful framework in my opinion, because

31:20

it allows you to sort through

31:22

all the data and information that's

31:24

out there about, well, this area,

31:26

the stria terminalis is active or

31:28

the basilateral amygdala is active or

31:30

gray matter thickening or this hormone

31:33

or that hormone and return to

31:35

a kind of kernel of certainly

31:37

not exhaustive truth. It doesn't cover

31:39

all aspects of emotionality, but at

31:41

least establishes some groundwork from which

31:43

you can start to evaluate how

31:45

different behaviors might or might not

31:47

make sense, how certain emotional responses

31:50

might or might not make sense,

31:52

regardless of the age of the

31:54

person or the organism. I'd like to

31:56

take a quick break and thank one

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proper amounts of electrolytes. I'll also

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drink a packet of element dissolved

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in water during any kind of

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physical exercise that I'm doing, especially

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on hot days when I'm sweating

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a sweating a lot and losing.

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using water and electrolytes. There are

33:00

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33:21

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33:23

a theory of emotional development that

33:25

I find. particularly interesting, which is

33:27

from Alan Shore at UCLA, that

33:30

talks about how most of our

33:32

testing of bonds and relationships is

33:34

the seesawing back and forth between

33:36

very dopaminergic, so driven by dopamine

33:38

or serotonergic, driven by serotonin, states,

33:40

and this starts with infant and

33:42

mother or infant and father, healthy

33:44

emotional development clearly. begins with an

33:46

ability for the caretaker and child

33:48

to be in calm, peaceful, soothing,

33:50

touch-oriented, eye-gazing type of behaviors. Those

33:52

really drive serotonin, the endogenous opioid

33:54

system, oxytocin, things that are very

33:56

calming and are centered around pleasure

33:59

with the here and now. as

34:01

well as excited states of what

34:03

we're going to do next, there's

34:05

actually a kind of characteristic sign

34:07

of the dopaminergic interaction where both

34:09

caretaker and child are wide-eyed, the

34:11

pupils dilate, that's signature of arousal,

34:13

they get really excited, oftentimes the

34:16

baby will look away if it

34:18

gets really excited, that those are

34:20

signatures of dopamine release in the

34:22

body. And in adolescence, these same

34:24

things carry forward, where their good

34:26

bonds are achieved through. hanging around,

34:28

watching TV, just kind of being

34:30

there, you know, playing video games

34:33

or texting together or talking, whatever

34:35

it is that the soothing local

34:37

activity happens to be, as well

34:39

as adventure and things that are

34:41

exciting. And so this kind of

34:43

seesawing back and forth between the

34:45

different reward systems seems to be

34:47

the basis from which healthy

34:49

emotional bonds are created. We

34:52

can't have a complete conversation

34:54

about emotions and bonds and

34:56

social connection without talking about

34:58

oxytocin. Oxytocin has come to

35:00

such prominence in the last

35:03

decade or so and seems

35:05

to be everywhere anytime you

35:07

hear a discussion about neuroscience

35:09

in the brain or hormones in

35:11

the brain. Oxytocin is released

35:13

in response to lactation in

35:16

females. It is released in response

35:18

to sexual interactions. It

35:20

is released in response

35:23

to non-sexual touch. It's

35:25

released in males and

35:27

females. And indeed, it's

35:29

involved in pair bonding

35:31

and the establishment of

35:34

social bonds in general. How

35:36

it does that seems to

35:39

be by matching internal state.

35:41

It seems to both increase

35:43

synchrony of internal state

35:45

somehow. Maybe it sets a

35:48

level of calmness or alertness.

35:50

That seems like a reasonable

35:52

hypothesis. As well as raising

35:54

people's awareness for the

35:57

emotional state of their partner.

35:59

And again. this brings us back

36:01

to this alertness calmness axis and

36:03

this interreceptive extraceptive axis. In order

36:05

to form good bonds we can't

36:07

just be thinking about how we

36:10

feel we also need to be

36:12

paying attention to how others feel

36:14

and we're evaluating a match. We're

36:16

trying to see whether or not

36:18

there seems to be some sort

36:20

of synchrony between states and oxytocin

36:23

both seems to increase that synchrony

36:25

and increase the awareness for the

36:27

emotional state. of others. So here

36:29

are some experiments that involve the

36:31

administration of intranasal oxytocin. What's been

36:33

reported is increased positive communication among

36:36

couples. That study, just if you,

36:38

for those you like, was published

36:40

in biological psychiatry, which my psychiatry

36:42

colleagues tell me is a fine

36:44

journal, and the title is intranasyl

36:47

oxytocin increases positive communication and reduces

36:49

the stress hormone cortisol levels during

36:51

couple conflict. They have them fight.

36:53

with and without oxytocin. So interesting,

36:55

very much in line with the

36:57

idea that oxytocin is the quote-unquote

37:00

trust hormone. The other molecule that

37:02

we make that's extremely important for

37:04

social bonds and emotionality is one

37:06

that we're going to talk about

37:08

more in the month on hormones,

37:10

and that's vasopressin. Vasopresin has effects

37:13

on the brain directly. It actually

37:15

creates feelings of giddy love. It

37:17

also has very interesting effects on

37:19

monogamous or non-monogamous behavior. This, again,

37:21

we will revisit in the future,

37:23

but there's a beautiful set of

37:26

experiments that have been done in

37:28

a little rodent species called a

37:30

prairie vole. It turns out there

37:32

are two different populations of prairie

37:34

vole. Some are... very robustly non-monogamous.

37:36

They mate with as many other

37:39

prairie voles as they can and

37:41

turns out that levels of vasopressin

37:43

and or vasopressin receptor dictate whether

37:45

or not they're monogamous or not.

37:47

There's actually some interesting evidence in

37:50

humans when people report their... assuming

37:52

they're reporting it accurately, that vasopressin

37:54

and vasopressin levels can relate to

37:56

monogamy or non-monogamy in humans as

37:58

well. We're gonna talk about this

38:00

in the month on hormones. If

38:03

we're talking about the neuroscience of

38:05

emotions, we have to talk about

38:07

the Vegas nerve. I describe what

38:09

the Vegas nerve is in a

38:11

previous episode. That's these connections between

38:13

the body and the viscera, including

38:16

the gut, the heart, the lungs,

38:18

the lungs, and the immune system,

38:20

and the brain, and the brain,

38:22

and the brain, and that the

38:24

brain is also controlling these organs,

38:26

There's this big myth out there

38:29

that I mentioned before that stimulating

38:31

the Vegas in various ways leads

38:33

to calmness that it's always going

38:35

to calm you down and that

38:37

is false. Now this is interesting

38:40

in light of emotionality because of

38:42

work that's been done by many

38:44

groups but in particular I'm going

38:46

to focus on the work of

38:48

a colleague of mine Carl Deisseroth

38:50

at Stanford who's a psychiatrist but

38:53

has also developed a lot of

38:55

tools to adjust the activity of

38:57

neurons in real time using light

38:59

and electrical stimulation and so forth.

39:01

I'll refer you to an article

39:03

in the New Yorker that was

39:06

published about this a few years

39:08

ago. I'm going to read a

39:10

brief excerpt. I'll put the link

39:12

in the caption as well. He's

39:14

talking to an extremely depressed, suicidal

39:16

depressed patient who has a small

39:19

device implanted that allows her to

39:21

adjust her Vegas nerve activity. his

39:23

office and they're talking and he

39:25

asks her how she's doing and

39:27

she she describes how she's been

39:29

doing as previously as quote-unquote going

39:32

pancake which for her just means

39:34

totally laid out flat not much

39:36

going on she talks about how

39:38

she doesn't want to pursue a

39:40

job she's really depressed and he

39:43

says in you know typical good

39:45

psychiatrist fashion you know well that's

39:47

a lot to think about that's

39:49

actually the quote And they talk

39:51

about her blood pressure, etc. And

39:53

then she says, you know, mood's

39:56

been down, just spiraling down, talks

39:58

about insomnia, bad dreams, low. So

40:00

this is severe depression. This is

40:02

what we call major depression. And

40:04

then she requests, can we please

40:06

go up to 1.5 on Vegas

40:09

stimulation? She'd been receiving 1.2 million

40:11

amps of stimulation every five minutes

40:13

to 30 seconds, but was no

40:15

longer able to feel the effects.

40:17

So he says, okay, I think

40:19

we can go up a little.

40:22

You're tolerating things well.

40:24

They start the stimulation and

40:26

quote, in the course of the next

40:28

few minutes. Her name was Sally underwent

40:31

a remarkable change. Her frown disappeared.

40:33

She became cheerful, describing the pleasure

40:35

she had had during the Christmas

40:37

holiday and recounting how she'd recently

40:39

watched some YouTube videos of Diceroth.

40:41

She was still smiling and talking when

40:44

the session ended and they walked out

40:46

to the reception area. So this is

40:48

just by stimulating and activating the Vegas.

40:50

Now why am I bringing this up?

40:52

Well, for several reasons. One is the

40:54

Vegas is fascinating in terms of the

40:56

brain body connection. Two, I'd like to...

40:59

keep trying to dispel the myth that

41:01

Vegas stimulation is all about being calm.

41:03

It's really about being alert. I don't

41:05

know how that originally got going

41:07

backwards, but it's about being alert.

41:09

And once again... level of alertness or

41:12

level of calmness is impacting emotion that

41:14

this access of alertness and calmness is

41:16

one primary access in emotion. It's not

41:18

the only one because there's also this

41:21

valence component of good or bad and

41:23

it's those two aren't the only ones

41:25

because there's also this component of interoceptive

41:27

extraoceptive that we talked about earlier and

41:30

there will be others too. Again it's

41:32

not exhaustive but I find it fascinating

41:34

and it really brings us back to

41:37

where we started, which is what are

41:39

the core elements of emotion and what can

41:41

you do about them? This business of how

41:43

you conceptualize emotions is really the most powerful

41:45

tool you can ever have in terms of

41:48

understanding and regulating your emotional

41:50

state, if you're willing to try and

41:52

wrap your head around it. I realize

41:54

it's not the simplest thing to do,

41:56

but rather than think of emotions as

41:58

just these labels have. happy, sad,

42:00

sad, awe, depressed, thinking

42:03

about emotions emotions

42:05

elements of

42:07

the brain and

42:09

body that encompass

42:11

levels of alertness that include a

42:13

dynamic with the outside world and

42:15

your perception of your internal state. internal

42:17

starting to really think about emotions

42:19

in a structured way can not

42:21

only allow you to understand some

42:23

of the pathology of when of when

42:25

you might feel depressed or anxious or

42:27

others are depressed and anxious, but

42:29

also to develop a richer emotional

42:31

experience to anything. to anything. I offer

42:33

it to you as a of of

42:35

knowledge you which you can start

42:37

to think about your emotional life

42:39

differently, I hope, others as well as

42:41

others more a way that builds

42:43

more richness into that experience, not

42:45

that detracts from it. I I want

42:47

to thank you for your time

42:49

and attention, and thank you for

42:51

your for science. in science.