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welcome to hubman lab Essentials where
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we revisit past episodes for the most
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potent and actionable science-based
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tools for mental health physical health
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and
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[Music]
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performance my name is Andrew huberman
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
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Opthalmology at Stanford school of
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medicine so let's talk about emotions
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emotions are a fascinating and vital
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aspect of our life experience it's fair
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to say that emotions make up most of
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what we think of as our experence of
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life even the things we do our behaviors
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and the places we go and the people we
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end up encountering in our life all of
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that really funnels into our emotional
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perception of what those things mean
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whether or not they made us happy or sad
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or depressed or lonely or we awe
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inspiring now one thing that is
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absolutely true is that everyone's
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perception of emotion is slightly
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different meaning your idea of happy is
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very likely different than my idea of
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what a state of happiness is and we know
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this also for color vision for instance
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even though the cells in your eye and my
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eye that perceive the color red are
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identical right down to the genes that
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they express we can be certain based on
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experimental evidence and what are
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called psychophysical studies that your
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idea of the most intense red is going to
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be very different than my idea of the
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most intense red if we were given a
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selection of 10 different Reds and asked
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which one is most intense which one
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looks most red and that seems crazy you
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would think that something as simple as
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color would be Universal and yet it's
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not and so we need to agree at the
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outset that emotions are complicated and
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yet they are tractable they can be
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understood and today we're going to talk
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about a lot of tools to understand what
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emotions are for you to understand what
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your emotional states mean and what they
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don't mean and in doing that that will
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allow you to place value on whether or
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not you should hold an emotional state
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as true or not true whether or not it
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has meaning or it doesn't as well as
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whether or not the emotions of others
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are important to you in a given
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context we're going to talk a lot about
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development in fact we're going to
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center a lot of our discussion today
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around infancy and puberty we're also
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going to talk about tools for enhancing
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one's emotional range and for navigating
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difficult emotional situations I'm not a
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clinical psychologist I'm not a
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therapist but I do have some background
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in Psychology and today I'm going to be
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drawing from the psychology greats not
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me but from the greats of psychology who
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studied emotion who studied emotional
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development and linking that to the
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Neuroscience of emotion because nowadays
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we understand a lot about the chemicals
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and the hormones and the neural circuits
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in the brain and body that underly
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emotion so while there's no one single
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universally true theory of emotion at
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the intersection of many of the existing
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theories there are really some ground
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truths if we want to understand emotions
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we have to look at where emotions first
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develop and the rule that every good
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neuroanatomist knows is that if you want
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to understand what a part of the brain
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does you have to address two questions
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you have to know what connections does
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that brain area make and you need to
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know what's called the developmental
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origin of that structure what are the
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brain areas for emotion and nowadays
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there's a lot of debate about this for
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years it was thought that there might be
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circuit meaning Connections in the brain
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that generate the feeling of being happy
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or circuits that generate the feeling of
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being sad
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Etc that's been challenged and yet I
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think there's good evidence for circuits
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in the brain such as lyic circuits and
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other circuits that shift our overall
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States or our overall level of alertness
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or calmness or whether or not they bias
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us toward viewing the outside world or
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paying more attention to what's going on
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inside our bodies but the important
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thing to understand is that emot do
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arise in the brain and body and if we
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want to understand how emotions work we
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have to look how emotions are built and
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they are built during infancy
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adolescence and puberty and then it
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continues into adulthood but the
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groundwork is laid down early in
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development when we are small children
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you were born into this world without
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really any understanding of the things
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around you now there are two ways that
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you can interact with the world and
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you're always doing them more or less to
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some degree at the same
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time those are interoception paying
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attention to what's going on inside you
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what you feel internally and
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exteroception paying attention to what's
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going on outside you hold that in mind
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please because the fact that you're both
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intercepting and exter accepting is true
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for your entire life and it sets the
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foundation for understanding emotions
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it's absolutely critical as an
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infant you didn't have any knowledge of
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what you needed you didn't understand
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hunger you didn't understand cold or
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heat or any of that when you needed
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something you experience that as anxiety
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you would feel an increase in alertness
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if you had to use the bathroom you would
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feel an increase in alertness if you
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were hungry and you would vocalize you
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would cry out you would act agitated you
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might coup you might do a number of
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different things and then your caregiver
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whoever that might have been would
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respond to that so this is actually
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really important to understand that a
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baby when you were a baby and when I was
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a baby we didn't have any sense of the
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outside world except that it responded
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to our acts of anxiety essentially all
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developmental psychologists agree that
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babies lack the ability to make
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cognitive sense of the outside world but
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in this feeling of anxiety and
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registering one's own internal State and
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then crying out to the outside world
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either through crying or subtle
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vocalizations or even just cing making
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some noise we start to develop a
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relationship with the outside world in
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which our internal States our shifts and
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anxiety start to drive requests and
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people come and respond to those
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requests and this gets to the basis of
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what emotions are about which are
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emotions are really about forming bonds
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and being able to predict things in the
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world and at this point I actually just
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want to pause and mention a really
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interesting tool that is trying to
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address this question of what are
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emotions and what do they consist of
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that you can use if you like this is an
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app I didn't develop it I don't have any
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relationship to them but the app was
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developed by people at Yale and it's
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called mood meter what they're trying to
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do is put more Nuance more subtlety on
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our words and our language for for
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emotions and be able to to allow you to
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predict how you're going to feel in the
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future I'm on the app right now and I
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know you can't see this but it's called
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mood meter you know it says to me hi
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Andrew how are you right now and I click
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the little tab that says I feel and I
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can either pick high energy and
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unpleasant high energy and pleasant low
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energy unpleasant or low energy Pleasant
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and I would say right now I feel high
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energy Pleasant so I just revealed to
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you how I feel so I click on that and
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then it gives you a gallery of colors
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and you just move your finger to the
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location where you think it matches most
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and as you do that little words pop up
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so say motivated cheerful inspired I
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would say I'm feeling right now cheerful
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so you click that and then you just go
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to the next window and it just says what
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are you doing and I this feels like play
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to me but I'm going to call it work and
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then that's it and then um what it does
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is it basically starts to collect data
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on you you're giving it information and
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it starts to link that to other features
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that you allow it access to if you like
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and it starts helping you be able to
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predict how you're going to feel at
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different times a day and
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it points to a couple really interesting
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features which is that we don't really
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have enough language to describe all the
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emotional states and yet there's some
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core truths to what makes up an emotion
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this can really help people kids and
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adults understand better what they're
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feeling and why and when best to engage
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in certain activities and thankfully
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when best to avoid certain activities
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too so the way this works is the
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following you need to ask yourself at
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any point you could do this right now if
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you like what's your level of autonomic
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arousal autonomic arousal is just the
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Continuum the range of alert to calm so
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if you're in a panic right now you are
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like 10 out of 10 on the arousal scale
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if you're asleep you're probably not
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comprehending what I'm saying although
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maybe a little bit but let's say you're
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very drowsy you might be at a one or a
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two and then there's this other axis
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this other question which is what we
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call veilance now veilance is a value do
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you feel good or bad I would say I feel
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pretty good right now on a scale of 1 to
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10 I'm like a I don't know I feel like a
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seven so I'm alert and I feel pretty
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good and then there's a third thing
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which is how much we are intercepting
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and how much we are excepting all right
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so how much our attention is focused
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internally on what we're feeling and how
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much it's focused exter internally and
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this is always going to be in a dynamic
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balance so for instance if you're really
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really stressed often times that puts
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you in a position to be really in touch
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with what's going on in your body if you
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start having a lot of somatic a lot of
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bodily Sensations like your heart is
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beating so fast that you can't ignore it
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then you're really strongly interceptive
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so there these three things how alert or
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sleepy you are that's one how good or
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bad you feel that's two and then whether
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or not most of your attention is
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directed outward or whether or not it's
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directed Inward and much of what we call
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emotions are made up by those three
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things let's return to the infant
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there's the baby in the crib it's mostly
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intercepting as caregivers bring it what
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it needs you hope milk diaper changes
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Etc a warm blanket if it's cold pull off
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the blanket when the baby's fussing and
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it's too warm because babies get too
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warm also it starts to exter roep the
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baby starts to look into the outside
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world and start making predictions it
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starts wondering how much it needs to
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cry or predicting well if I cry like a
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little bit then Mom comes over and I get
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my milk babies are starting to evaluate
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and do all this but they're not doing it
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consciously they're doing this in order
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to relieve anxiety as a young creature
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an infant and young toddler you were
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mainly focused Inward and you started to
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understand what was going on outward as
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a way of predicting what would bring you
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relief what would remove your anxiety
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and that's where the fundamental rules
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of your experience your emotional
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experience were laid down so now let's
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talk about what kind of baby you were
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because that actually informs your
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emotionality now these are classic
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they're actually famous experiments done
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by bulby and answorth this is this
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classic experiment of the what was
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called The Strange situation task in
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which
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and I'm describing it very coarsely here
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I realize but a mother and child come
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into the
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laboratory the baby and the mother or
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father play together for a bit and then
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the mother
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leaves the mother leaves for some period
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of time and then comes back and the
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research is devoted to understanding the
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response of the child when the caretaker
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the mother or the father returns Balby
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and answorth and many of their
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scientific Offspring and
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colleagues identified at least four
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patterns that babies display when their
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caretaker returns and they group these
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into group a b c d so much so that the
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kids were referred to as a babies B
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babies C bab or D babies the first
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babies are the a babies when their
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caretaker would return the infant would
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respond with happiness with what looked
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like Delight they would go to the
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caretaker they seemed happy these are
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referred to as secure attached kids the
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B babies as they're called
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were less likely to seek comfort from
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their caregiver when the caregiver would
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return so they would sometimes continue
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to play with their toys or they would uh
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be with the they had an adult in the
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room while the parent was gone they
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would stay with them these were referred
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to as avoidant
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babies the ca babies
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would respond to the return of the
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caregiver with acts of annoyance they
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seemed kind of angry and those were
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referred to as ambivalent babies and
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then the third category the D babies
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were the disorganized babies the child
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avoided interactions with everyone and
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their behavior didn't really change
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whether or not the caregiver was there
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or not this work this classic work
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opened up a huge set of important
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questions that relate to what is the
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reestablishment of the bond really about
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I mean what's actually being figured out
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here is not whether or not there are
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four categories of babies that's
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interesting but it presumably is more
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interesting to focus on what is it that
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defines a really good Bond a secure
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attachment or an insecure attachment or
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an avoidant attachment and the four
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things are
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Gaye literally eye
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contact VOC vocalizations so what we say
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how we say it affect or emotion so the
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way that we express you know crying
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smiling Etc and touch but gaze
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vocalization affect and touch are really
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the core of this thing that we call
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social bonds and
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emotionality and it's clear from most
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all of the theories of emotional health
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that an ability to recognize when your
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own internal state is being driven
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primarily by external events as
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important for being able to emotionally
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regulate right people who are constantly
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being yanked around by the external
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happenings in the world you would say
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are emotionally labile they are not in
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control of their emotions even if
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they're calm all the time if that
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calmness only arrives because they're in
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a Placid environment and then you put
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you know a cracker in that environment
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and they freak out well then they're not
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really calm so how much your the outside
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environment disrupts your internal
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internal environment has everything to
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do with this balance of interception and
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exter reception and it very likely has
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roots in whether or not you were secure
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attached or insecure attached
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disorganized or ambivalent as a baby so
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while we can't travel back in time there
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is an exercise that you can do to
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address at least in this moment whether
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or not you have a bias for exteroception
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or a bias for
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interoception if you close your eyes
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right now and concentrate on the contact
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of any portion of your body and trying
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to bring as much of your attention to
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that point of contact as possible and
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then from there you're going to move
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your attention even more deeply into say
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the sensation of what's going on in your
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gut Are You full are you empty are you
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hungry are you not uh is your heart
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beating at what rate what's the Cadence
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of your breathing basically bringing
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your focus and attention to everything
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at the surface of your skin and inward
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so I I'm going to do a rare thing on the
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hubman Lab podcast I'm going to
00:16:01
introduce about 5 to eight seconds of
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Silence um in order to allow you to do
00:16:05
that a little
00:16:15
bit now try and do something that for
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most people actually is a little bit
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harder which is to purely extero put put
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your eyes or your ears or both on
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anything in your immediate space I would
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say look across the room pick a panel on
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the wall or a you know a leg of a table
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or something and try and bring as much
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of your attention to that as possible
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and again I'll take about 5 Seconds of
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Silence to allow you to
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exospeed it's hard to place 100% of your
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attention on something externally unless
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it's really exciting really novel if
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you've ever watched a really great movie
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presumably you're exter accepting more
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than you're intercepting until something
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exciting happens and then and then you
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feel something you're actually tethering
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your emotional experience to something
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external and now you can also do this
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dynamically you can decide to focus
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internally and then externally you can
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decide to split it 50% 50% or 70 30
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one can develop you can develop a
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heightened ability to do this and the
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power of doing that is actually that
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when you are in environments where you
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feel like you're focused too much
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internally and you'd like to be focused
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more externally you can actually do that
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deliberately but as you notice it takes
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work these exercises are really what are
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at the core of these development of
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emotional bonds because as we mentioned
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before these four things the gaze
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vocalization touch and affect those are
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happening very dynamically so if
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somebody Winks at you you're paying
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attention to their wink but then you
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also notice how you feel this is very
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Dynamic so if it seems overwhelming to
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try and intercept and exter and then
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shift the balance you do that all the
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time your brain and nervous system are
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fantastic at doing this now some people
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have a very hard time breaking out of a
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very strongly interceptive mode some
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people have a harder time breaking out
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of their extra receptive mode it's very
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interesting to note the the extent to
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which we have biases in how interceptive
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or exter receptive we are remember those
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three axes that we talked about earlier
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you have veilance good or bad you have
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alertness alert or calm and you have
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interceptive or EXT receptive bias early
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in development you start off with this
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interceptive bias you are starting to
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develop expectations predictions about
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how the outside world is going to work
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and you are trying to figure out the
00:19:03
reliability of outside events and people
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and where things are reliable when
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people are reliable we are able to give
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up more of our interoception there's
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literally trust that our interceptive
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needs our internal needs will be met
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through bonds and actions of others this
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starts to Veer toward the discussion
00:19:25
about neglect and Trauma we are going to
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devote entire episodes probably an
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entire month to trauma and PTSD but
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these those have roots in what we're
00:19:35
talking about now and it's important to
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internalize and understand what we're
00:19:38
talking about now in order to get the
00:19:39
most out of those future conversations
00:19:42
so now I want to just
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pause just shove the discussion about
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interception exter reception for a
00:19:48
moment and I want to talk about what is
00:19:50
arguably the second most if not equally
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important aspect of your development as
00:19:57
it relates to emotionality and as it
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relates to this what I called trust but
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this ability to predict whether or not
00:20:04
things in the outside world are reliable
00:20:06
or not Rel reliable in terms of their
00:20:09
ability to help you meet your
00:20:11
interceptive needs and that period is
00:20:15
puberty so up until now we've been
00:20:16
talking mainly about psychology not a
00:20:18
lot of biology not a lot of mechanism
00:20:20
and now we're going to transition into
00:20:22
talking about mechanism hormones
00:20:24
receptors Etc puberty is a absolute
00:20:28
biolog iCal event it has a beginning and
00:20:32
it has a specific definition which is
00:20:34
the transition into reproductive
00:20:36
maturity so there are a lot of hormonal
00:20:38
changes yes there are also a lot of
00:20:40
brain changes and most people don't
00:20:41
realize it but the brain changes occur
00:20:43
first the brain turns on the hormone
00:20:46
systems that allow puberty to occur one
00:20:49
of the more interesting molecules that
00:20:51
triggers puberty in all individuals is
00:20:54
something called kisspeptin k i SS p p e
00:20:59
p t i n kisspeptin kisspeptin is made by
00:21:03
the brain and it
00:21:05
stimulates large amounts of a different
00:21:08
hormone called
00:21:09
GnRH gonadotropin releasing hormone to
00:21:12
be released gonadotropin releasing
00:21:14
hormone then causes the release of
00:21:16
another hormone something like called
00:21:18
luteinizing hormone or LH which travels
00:21:21
in the bloodstream and stimulates the
00:21:24
ovaries of females to produce estrogen
00:21:26
and the testes of males to produce
00:21:29
testosterone now this is interesting
00:21:31
because at this point the testes in M
00:21:35
start churning out tons of testosterone
00:21:37
in order to trigger the development of
00:21:39
secondary sexual characteristics body
00:21:41
hair and all the others deepening of
00:21:43
voice Etc and in female's estrogen is
00:21:46
doing various other things breast
00:21:48
development Etc so that's how puberty
00:21:51
happens at the biological level gets
00:21:53
triggered by leptin and kisspeptin and
00:21:55
then this young child
00:21:58
is now a different creature to some to
00:22:01
some extent not just because they're
00:22:04
reproductively competent of course but
00:22:06
because there's a shift in a number of
00:22:08
the things that underly these social
00:22:11
bonds there are there's a market shift
00:22:14
in a number of the things that allow
00:22:17
children and adults to engage in
00:22:20
predictive Behavior about each other and
00:22:23
most of what consumes the minds and
00:22:26
waking hours of adolescence and children
00:22:29
who have gone through puberty and going
00:22:30
through puberty is questions about how
00:22:34
they relate to social structures who
00:22:36
they can rely on and how they can make
00:22:39
reliable predictions in the world now
00:22:41
that they have more agency that they are
00:22:42
physically changed in fact you could
00:22:45
argue that puberty is the fastest rate
00:22:48
of maturation that you'll go through at
00:22:49
any point in your life it's the largest
00:22:51
change that you'll go through at any
00:22:53
point in your life in terms of who you
00:22:55
are because your biology has
00:22:57
fundamentally changed at the level of
00:22:58
your brain and your your bodily organs
00:23:01
all your organs from the skin inward so
00:23:05
I want to visit a little bit of the
00:23:07
research about some of the core needs
00:23:11
that occur during puberty and
00:23:13
Adolescence so there's a terrific review
00:23:15
article that was published in the
00:23:17
journal Nature about the biology of
00:23:21
adolescence and puberty as well as some
00:23:24
of the core needs and demands that have
00:23:27
to be met for successful emotional
00:23:29
maturation during that time we we will
00:23:32
provide a link to that but I'm I just
00:23:34
want to highlight a few of the things
00:23:36
that they place in the final table I
00:23:38
don't want to go through all the results
00:23:39
right now because you could do that on
00:23:41
your own if you like they mainly
00:23:43
highlight a lot of the changes in
00:23:46
neurons and neural circuits for instance
00:23:48
I'll just highlight one there's a
00:23:50
connection between the dopamine centers
00:23:52
in the brain and an area of the brain
00:23:54
that's involved in emotion and dispersal
00:23:58
dispersal is very interesting What You
00:23:59
observe in animals and
00:24:02
humans is that around the end of
00:24:05
adolescence and during the transition to
00:24:07
puberty both because of changes in the
00:24:09
brain and changes in
00:24:11
hormones there's an intense desire on
00:24:15
the part of the child to get further and
00:24:19
further away from primary caregivers
00:24:21
mostly there's a desire to start
00:24:23
spending more time with friends more
00:24:25
time with peers and less time with
00:24:27
adults so there's something about these
00:24:29
hormones that don't just allow sexual
00:24:32
reproduction they don't just change the
00:24:34
brain and bodily organs in the shape of
00:24:36
of us they also bias us towards
00:24:40
dispersal getting further and further
00:24:42
away from primary caregivers in
00:24:43
particular and what's interesting is
00:24:46
during puberty there's increased con
00:24:49
connection connectivity as we call it
00:24:51
between the prefrontal cortex which is
00:24:53
involved in motivation and decision-
00:24:55
making being able to suppress action for
00:24:58
making long-term uh goals possible uh as
00:25:02
well as dopamine centers and the amydala
00:25:04
so there's this really broad integration
00:25:07
and testing I think this is the key
00:25:09
element here testing of circuits for
00:25:12
emotions and reward as they relate to
00:25:14
decisions and I think that's useful
00:25:17
because when you look at the behavior of
00:25:18
Adolescent and teens they are testing
00:25:20
social interactions they are testing
00:25:22
physical interactions with the world
00:25:24
often times they're engaging in unsafe
00:25:26
behavior and you can't um just I I would
00:25:30
never try and justify that with with the
00:25:32
underlying neurology but the
00:25:34
Neuroscience points to increased
00:25:36
connectivity between areas of the brain
00:25:38
that are related to emotionality and uh
00:25:42
to threat detection like the amydala but
00:25:44
also reward so it's a time of testing
00:25:47
behaviorally how different behaviors
00:25:49
lead to success or not it's how
00:25:52
different behaviors lead to fear States
00:25:54
or not you can start to map the
00:25:56
neurology onto some of this emotion
00:25:58
exploration I do realize that this
00:26:00
episode is about emotions puberty is a
00:26:02
time in which the internal state of the
00:26:06
person or the animal is being sampled
00:26:08
and tested against different extra
00:26:10
receptive events only now they are able
00:26:13
to guide those events with more agency
00:26:16
the child or the Adolescent is now able
00:26:19
the teen really is able to Now sample
00:26:23
many many more extra receptive events
00:26:25
through behavior and so ad Ence and
00:26:28
puberty is really seen as the period of
00:26:31
development in which one self- samples
00:26:34
for these two elements that we talked
00:26:35
about at the beginning which are how do
00:26:38
I form bonds and how do I make
00:26:40
predictions about what will make me feel
00:26:43
good at a level of interoception but in
00:26:46
terms of the biology it's clear that
00:26:48
there's this stage of development where
00:26:51
more autonomy more physical capability
00:26:54
is triggered by these hormone changes in
00:26:55
the brain and these peptide changes in
00:26:58
the brain and body and that nonetheless
00:27:01
brings us back to the exact same model
00:27:04
that we started with an infancy of alert
00:27:07
or calm feel good or feel bad primarily
00:27:11
exter accepting primarily intercepting
00:27:14
so I keep going back to this I'm sort of
00:27:15
like a repeating record on that because
00:27:18
the same core algorithm the same core
00:27:20
function is at play throughout the
00:27:22
lifespan and that's a useful framework
00:27:25
in my opinion because it allows you to
00:27:27
sort through through all the data and
00:27:29
information that's out there about well
00:27:31
this area the stat terminalis is active
00:27:33
or the basolateral amydala is active or
00:27:34
gry matter thickening or this hormone or
00:27:37
that hormone and return to a kind of
00:27:39
Kernel of certainly not exhaustive truth
00:27:42
it doesn't cover all aspects of
00:27:44
emotionality but at least establishes
00:27:47
some groundwork from which you can start
00:27:49
to evaluate how different behaviors
00:27:51
might or might not make sense how
00:27:54
certain emotional responses might or
00:27:56
might not make sense regardless of the
00:27:58
age of the person or the organism
00:28:00
there's a theory of emotional
00:28:02
development that I find particularly
00:28:04
interesting which is from Allan Shore at
00:28:06
UCLA that talks about how most of our
00:28:09
testing of bonds and relationships is
00:28:12
this seawing back and forth between very
00:28:14
dopaminergic so driven by dopamine or
00:28:17
serotonergic driven by serotonin States
00:28:20
and this starts with infant and mother
00:28:22
or infant and father healthy emotional
00:28:24
development
00:28:25
clearly begins with an ability for the
00:28:29
caretaker and child to be in calm
00:28:31
peaceful soothing touch oriented eye
00:28:34
gazing type of behaviors those really
00:28:37
Drive serotonin the endogenous opioid
00:28:40
system uh oxytocin things that are very
00:28:44
calming and are centered around pleasure
00:28:46
with the here and now as well as excited
00:28:49
states of what we're going to do next
00:28:50
there's actually a a kind of
00:28:52
characteristic sign of the dopaminergic
00:28:55
interaction where both car AK and child
00:28:58
have are wide-eyed the pupils dilate
00:29:00
that's signature of arousal they get
00:29:02
really excited often times the baby will
00:29:04
look away if it gets really excited that
00:29:06
those are signatures of dopamine release
00:29:08
in the body and in adolescence these
00:29:11
same things carry forward where their
00:29:13
good bonds are achieved through hanging
00:29:16
around watching TV just kind of being or
00:29:19
you know playing video games or texting
00:29:22
together or talking whatever it is that
00:29:23
the the soothing local activity happens
00:29:26
to be as well as Adventure and things
00:29:28
that are exciting and so this kind of
00:29:30
seawing back and forth between the
00:29:32
different reward systems seems to be the
00:29:35
basis from which healthy emotional bonds
00:29:38
are created we can't have a complete
00:29:40
conversation about emotions and bonds
00:29:43
and social connection without talking
00:29:44
about oxytocin oxytocin has come to such
00:29:48
prominence in the last decade or so and
00:29:50
seems to be everywhere anytime you hear
00:29:52
a discussion about neuros signs in the
00:29:54
brain or hormones in the brain
00:29:58
oxytocin is released in response to
00:30:01
lactation in females it is released in
00:30:05
response to sexual interactions it is
00:30:09
released in response to nonsexual touch
00:30:12
it's released in males and females and
00:30:16
indeed it's involved in pair bonding and
00:30:19
the establishment of social bonds in
00:30:23
general how it does that seems to be by
00:30:27
matching internal state it seems to both
00:30:30
increase synchrony of internal State
00:30:33
somehow maybe it sets a level of
00:30:35
calmness or alertness that seems like a
00:30:38
reasonable
00:30:39
hypothesis as well as raising people's
00:30:42
awareness for the emotional state of
00:30:45
their partner and again this brings us
00:30:48
back to this alertness calmness axis and
00:30:51
this inter receptive extra receptive
00:30:54
axis in order to form good bonds we
00:30:57
can't just be
00:30:58
thinking about how we feel we also need
00:31:00
to be paying attention to how others
00:31:02
feel and we're evaluating a match we're
00:31:05
trying to see whether or not there seems
00:31:07
to be some sort of synchrony between
00:31:09
states and oxytocin both seems to
00:31:12
increase that synchrony and increase the
00:31:15
awareness for the emotional state of
00:31:17
others so here are some experiments that
00:31:21
involve the administration of of
00:31:23
intranasal oxytocin what's been reported
00:31:25
is increase positive communic unication
00:31:28
among couples that study just if you for
00:31:30
those of you like was published in
00:31:31
biological Psychiatry which my
00:31:33
Psychiatry colleagues tell me is a fine
00:31:35
journal and the title is intranasal
00:31:37
oxytocin increases positive
00:31:39
communication and reduces the stress
00:31:41
hormone cortisol levels during couple
00:31:44
conflict they have them fight with and
00:31:46
without oxytocin so interesting very
00:31:49
much in line with the idea that oxytocin
00:31:51
is the quote unquote trust hormone the
00:31:54
other molecule that we make that's
00:31:55
extremely important for social bonds in
00:31:58
emotionality is one that we're going to
00:31:59
talk about more in the month on hormones
00:32:02
and that's vasopressin vasopressin has
00:32:04
effects on the brain directly it
00:32:07
actually creates feelings of giddy love
00:32:10
it also has very interesting effects on
00:32:12
monogamous or non- monogamous Behavior
00:32:16
this again we will revisit in the future
00:32:18
but there's a beautiful set of
00:32:20
experiments that have been done in a
00:32:21
little rodent species called a prairie V
00:32:24
it turns out there are two different
00:32:25
populations of prairie some are
00:32:26
monogamous they always mate with the
00:32:28
same other Prairie V and some are very
00:32:33
robustly non- monogamous they mate with
00:32:35
as many other Prairie vs as they can and
00:32:37
turns out that levels of vasopressin
00:32:39
Andor vasopressin receptor dictate
00:32:41
whether or not they're monogamous or not
00:32:43
there's actually some interesting
00:32:44
evidence in humans when you when people
00:32:47
report their behavior assuming they're
00:32:48
reporting it accurately that vasopressin
00:32:51
and vasopressin levels um can relate to
00:32:53
monogamy or non- monogamy in humans as
00:32:55
well we're going to talk about this in
00:32:57
the month on hormones if we're talking
00:32:59
about the Neuroscience of emotions we
00:33:00
have to talk about the vagus nerve I
00:33:03
described what the vagus nerve is in a
00:33:04
previous episode that's these
00:33:06
connections between the body and the
00:33:09
viscera including the gut the heart the
00:33:10
lungs and the immune system and the
00:33:12
brain and that the brain is also
00:33:14
controlling these organs so it's a
00:33:15
two-way street there's this big myth out
00:33:18
there that I mentioned before that
00:33:21
stimulating the Vegas in various ways
00:33:23
leads to calmness that it's always going
00:33:25
to calm you down and that is is false
00:33:28
now this is interesting in light of
00:33:31
emotionality because of work that's been
00:33:34
done by many groups but in particular
00:33:37
I'm going to focus on the work of a
00:33:38
colleague of mine Carl daero at Stanford
00:33:40
who's a psychiatrist but has also
00:33:42
developed a lot of tools to adjust the
00:33:45
activity of neurons in real time using
00:33:47
light and electrical stimulation and so
00:33:49
forth I'll refer you to an article in
00:33:52
the New Yorker that was published about
00:33:53
this a few years ago I'm going to read a
00:33:55
brief excerpt but I'll put the the link
00:33:57
in the caption as well he's talking to
00:33:59
an extremely depressed suicidally uh
00:34:02
depressed patient who has a small device
00:34:06
implanted that allows her to adjust her
00:34:08
vagus nerve activity they're in his
00:34:10
office and they're talking and he asks
00:34:13
her how she's doing and she she
00:34:14
describes how she's been doing as um
00:34:17
previously as quote unquote going
00:34:19
pancake which for her just means totally
00:34:21
laid out flat not much going on she
00:34:24
talks about how she doesn't want to
00:34:26
pursue a job but she's really depressed
00:34:29
um and he says in you know typical good
00:34:32
psychiatrist fashion you know well
00:34:33
that's a lot to think about that's
00:34:35
actually the quote um uh and they talk
00:34:39
about her blood pressure Etc and then
00:34:42
she says you know mood's been down just
00:34:44
spiraling down talks about insomnia bad
00:34:46
dreams low appetite so this is severe
00:34:50
depression this is what we call major
00:34:51
depression and then she requests can we
00:34:54
please go up to 1.5 on Vegas stimulation
00:34:57
she'd been receiving 1.2 milliamps of
00:35:00
stimulation every 5 minutes to 30
00:35:02
seconds but was no longer able to feel
00:35:04
the effects so he says okay I think we
00:35:07
can go up a little you're tolerating
00:35:08
things
00:35:09
well they
00:35:11
start the stimulation and quote in the
00:35:15
course of the next few minutes her name
00:35:17
was Sally underwent a remarkable change
00:35:19
her frown disappeared she became
00:35:21
cheerful describing the pleasure she had
00:35:23
had during the Christmas holiday and
00:35:24
recounting how she'd recently watched
00:35:25
some YouTube videos of D
00:35:29
she was still smiling and talking when
00:35:31
the session ended and they walked out to
00:35:33
the reception area so this is just by
00:35:35
stimulating and activating the Vegas now
00:35:36
why am I bringing this up well for
00:35:39
several reasons one is the Vegas is
00:35:41
fascinating in terms of the brain Body
00:35:43
Connection two I'd like to uh keep
00:35:46
trying to dispel the myth that Vegas
00:35:49
stimulation is all about being calm it's
00:35:50
really about being alert I don't know
00:35:52
how that originally got going backwards
00:35:54
but it's about being alert and once
00:35:57
again level of alertness or level of
00:36:00
calmness is impacting emotion that this
00:36:03
access of alertness and calmness is one
00:36:06
primary axis in Emotion it's not the
00:36:09
only one because there's also this
00:36:11
veilance component of good or bad and
00:36:13
it's those two aren't the only ones
00:36:15
because there's also this component of
00:36:16
inter receptive exter receptive that we
00:36:18
talked about earlier and there will be
00:36:19
others too again it's not exhaustive but
00:36:22
I find it fascinating and it really
00:36:23
brings us back to where we started which
00:36:26
is what are the core elements of emotion
00:36:28
and what can you do about them this
00:36:30
business of how you conceptualize
00:36:32
emotions is really the most powerful
00:36:33
tool you can ever have in terms of
00:36:37
understanding and regulating your
00:36:38
emotional state if you're willing to try
00:36:41
and wrap your head around it I realize
00:36:42
it's not the simplest thing to do but
00:36:45
rather than think of emotions as just
00:36:46
these labels happy sad awe depressed
00:36:50
thinking them thinking about emotions
00:36:52
excuse me
00:36:55
as elements of the brain embody that
00:36:59
Encompass levels of alertness that
00:37:01
include a dynamic with the outside world
00:37:03
and your perception of your internal
00:37:04
State and starting to really think about
00:37:07
emotions in a structured way can not
00:37:10
only allow you to understand some of the
00:37:12
pathology of when you know you might
00:37:14
feel depressed or anxious or others are
00:37:16
depressed and anxious but also to
00:37:18
develop a richer emotional experience to
00:37:20
anything so I offer it to you as a as a
00:37:24
source of knowledge from which you can
00:37:26
start to think about your emotional life
00:37:29
differently I hope as well as others in
00:37:31
a way that builds more richness into
00:37:33
that experience not that detracts from
00:37:35
it I want to thank you for your time and
00:37:37
attention and thank you for your
00:37:39
interest in science
00:37:43
[Music]
