'How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain' - Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett

Learn how emotions are made and get an insight into the secret life of the brain, with Canadian writer and psychologist, Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett.

One of the world’s most respected scientists in the field of human emotion, her book, 'How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain', has radically changed our understanding of the way we feel.

In a rare Australasian appearance, Lisa will discuss the way that culture, environment and personal history create emotion. Her research has vast implications for almost every aspect of our lives: from legal systems, to parenting to the way we understand the human mind and experience life.

[PassportGods]

18:40 simplistic questions.
23:48 emotional tracking (if you engage in different actions during instances of the same emotion, physical changes in your body track actions or predicted actions)
27:10 indications (28:24 emotions are not written in stone).
37:14 please take this info
42:56 summary
43:20 Logic v. Emotion
55:05 you are an architects of your own experience.

[brianbuday]

She is first rate. Discovered Dr.Barrett on Lex Fridman 👍

[ravik-qqee]

Here is an example of what Professor Barrett is saying: A child, while running slips and falls. No serious injuries. She
looks around notices a few adults who have watched her fall. She suddenly begins to express hurt from fall and becomes
teary eyed.

[biancaferrarijablonskis]

What an eye opener, thank you Lisa for bringing your work to life!

[bellezavudd]

So Facial expression understanding needs
a major face-lift.


On another note, while traveling I was surprised and fascinated to learn other countries/ cultures have different sounds and words for
the 'speech' of various animals.
The obvious everyday sounds ( obvious to me and most americans over the age of 4 ) of dogs expressing "bow-wow", "woof", or 'ruff'' were not so obvious to many non english speakers. Of course this was long before the information highway was opened for travel so those are sounds/concepts are probably becomeing more universal with each passing day.

[lenbilello]

Such an eye opener! Wish some the AI companies would keep this front and center in their ethos

[thesmartrn]

Hopefully, this will be common knowledge in another 60 years

[argolo]

There's an academic debate going on over decades about universality of emotions. Darwin started this and Paul Ekman provided further evidence. Lisa disagrees with the hypothesis, but the real implications of her empirical findings are subtle. She is showing that the model might not be accurate, but we knew that already. The categorization of emotions is just an attempt to explain the universality of some phenomena. For instance, most people react to pleasant experiences with a smile and aversion is related to nose wrinkling.This is also true for other primates and even blind newborns. Human behavior is much more complex, hence any taxonomy of emotion will probably be inaccurate. However, it does not mean that universal patterns do not exist.

[leighatkins]

I believe that ppl are also capable of picking up data from others in the form of electromagnetic exchange which also influences our judgement of others' emotional states, and that explains why some of us are more accurate in our assessments, but only if we are present to experience that person as well. This is based upon basic electronic and scientific concepts as well as personal experience.
But what she is saying backs up my own experience here in that when i asked to be shown why i was "such an emotional basketcase", and i was shown that i picked up other ppl's emotions, i suddenly realized that i was being burdened with others' emotional weight and that i didn't have to be.
So i chose to create a test to see if a feeling was mine or not, and when i discover it is not, i throw it away... this proved to me that i had full control over which emotions i experienced and which i did not, and that the data i was picking up was merely triggering sympathetic impulses in my brain which cascaded into emotional reactions.
10yrs later, with careful self-training, i am now in full control of my emotions, after a life-time of being thoroughly overwhelmed by them.
She is definitely right...

[PieYORU]

Many thanks lisa maim, It's helps alot❤❤

[malcolmarmstrong]

Humble is involved but nice and selfless and interacting

[djmcquillan]

Hmm. She states plenty of evidence about how emotional expression is variable in intensity & perhaps culturally, then goes on to make the claim that emotions are not written in the body, they are constructed in the brain. I'm not following here. This seems a bit of a leap.
I'm happy to accept that there may not be standard patterns of emotional expression.
As a meditator and mindbody therapist it's fairly common to encounter patterns of muscular contraction which when unpacked represent repressed emotional expression, generally due to judgement or trauma. I would say that the mind and body are completely interrelated. When someone experiences an emotion there are cognitive and bodily components of this.
Also she describes emotions as a construction that occurs when we interpret external stimuli and cross-reference them with internal sensations. The standard model here is that external stimuli are compared to our previous experience, and that our emotional and movement response is a product of our interpretation of these sensations (e.g. the perception of being threatened triggers a fear response). I'm sure that reality is more nuanced than this, and that there is a feedback loop between internal sensations and external experience which adds information to the picture, but I don't see any evidence presented here to throw out the standard model & replace it with her idea. Surely a combination of both would be more elegant.
Am I missing something here?

[pedronorman]

So the neuro-motor activation of facial muscles in response to fear, anger and threat is still indicative of a sympathetic fight-flight response.
I think it’s extremely relevant that different cultures all recognize the features of the fight-flight response, because it fundamentally denotes a lack of safety.
It’s interesting that she’s limited emotional activation to such small parameters.
Similarly, the facial expression of emotions is merely a reflection of emotional intensity. The faces of someone in the midst of pain and orgasm look similar because they both reflect similar engagement of the self and self-involvement during the event.
I find it interesting that’s she’s making such sweeping assumptions based solely from facial expressions rather than whole body somatic responses.
Her perspective is interesting but seems to be missing a lot.
She also took a cheap shot at “The Body Keeps The Score”, as though the author is proposing that somatic responses are controlled by anything other than the motor cortex.
I know she’s a neuroscience PhD but I’m very curious if she’s remotely aware of her own somatic experience of emotions. Because based on this lecture, I highly doubt it. I’m always amazed at how completely dissociated highly educated people are from their own mind-body experience.
That’s really my overarching takeaway from this lecture - she’s completely dissociated from her somatic experience, relative to a mind-body practitioner, mindfulness meditation practitioner, Indian yogi, or traditional medicine healer.

[annak]

43:40 "fallacy of battle between emotions and thinking"

[jyothishmg]

I would like to know how music trigger emotions...

[Gundog]

Interesting talk. There is a study called “Human cerebellum and corticocerebellar connections involved in emotional memory enhancement” that discovers there are several areas of the brain that involves emotional memory. I would be interested is seeing a study involving visually impaired people and the differences vs the visual able people.
On a separate subject, I wonder what part of the brain is activated to favor “a Democrat majority Senate.” Is that a historical emotion?

[chrisprenmusic]

Fear faces evolved from aggression faces as a defence mechanism. Also, bliss and pain look the same because the link is strong inner focus on sensation. So otherwise, of course faces don’t link to things as vague as emotions, but we do share across cultures and experiences face expressions to experiences. So we are really good at guessing and empathizing, especially with context.

You’re right that reading emotions is not simply a bunch of face muscle evaluations, it’s a process of empathy, which takes practice. But those devoid of that intuition can still use face expressions (and body language) to give more general pieces of information, just not emotions per se. So for example, that person is experience a strong focus on internal sensations. Or that person, is experiencing threat, and then context helps the rest of the way.

[Anna-kyix]

They also use it for a pain scale in a doctors office! They correlate a number value with a matching face coordinating to “pain” level expression. So silly! I do t make those faces when in pain at all!

[TheTobbe]

I still want to where emotions come from

[heidi.a.thomson]

I saw a microscopic photo. :) All those years in a lab.