Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett

Sensory signals are coming into your brain from the sensory surfaces of your body, from your retinas, from your cochlea. You've got sensory surfaces on your skin, inside your body, in your muscle cells, all these signals coming to your brain. They help select which prediction signal will be completed as action and lived experience.

Sensory signals are coming into your brain from the sensory surfaces of your body, from your retinas, from your cochlea. You've got sensory surfaces on your skin, inside your body, in your muscle cells, all these signals coming to your brain. They help select which prediction signal will be completed as action and lived experience.

Okay, so let's say you put yourself deliberately in a situation where the incoming signals will not Select any prediction because there's too much unpredicted signal there. It's error. There's another name in psychology for taking in prediction error.

Okay, so let's say you put yourself deliberately in a situation where the incoming signals will not Select any prediction because there's too much unpredicted signal there. It's error. There's another name in psychology for taking in prediction error.

Learning.

Learning.

Yeah, exposure therapy, which is a kind of learning. All learning. All learning is you taking in prediction error, signals you didn't predict or predict. There's no signal that you did predict. You predicted a signal. It's not there. So what you do is you set up situations for yourself that you will take in signals that are novel, right? And this seems like an easy thing to do.

Yeah, exposure therapy, which is a kind of learning. All learning. All learning is you taking in prediction error, signals you didn't predict or predict. There's no signal that you did predict. You predicted a signal. It's not there. So what you do is you set up situations for yourself that you will take in signals that are novel, right? And this seems like an easy thing to do.

People actually sometimes seek novelty, right? But too much novelty... it is not necessarily a good thing all the time, particularly if you're metabolically, it's expensive metabolically to take in prediction error and learn something new. Like the biggest costs that your brain expends energy on are moving your body, learning something new and dealing with persistent uncertainty.

People actually sometimes seek novelty, right? But too much novelty... it is not necessarily a good thing all the time, particularly if you're metabolically, it's expensive metabolically to take in prediction error and learn something new. Like the biggest costs that your brain expends energy on are moving your body, learning something new and dealing with persistent uncertainty.

Those are really expensive things for us. So if you're metabolically encumbered in some way, say you're depressed or you have anxiety disorder or maybe you have heart disease or diabetes or you're living under chronic stress, You don't have the spoons necessarily to take in prediction error. You're just going to go with your predictions. You aren't going to learn.

Those are really expensive things for us. So if you're metabolically encumbered in some way, say you're depressed or you have anxiety disorder or maybe you have heart disease or diabetes or you're living under chronic stress, You don't have the spoons necessarily to take in prediction error. You're just going to go with your predictions. You aren't going to learn.

You aren't going to be able to update those predictions.

You aren't going to be able to update those predictions.

You're going to be stuck in your head, right? Every experience, every action, a combination of the remembered past, the predictions, and the sensory present. But the sensory present is there just to select which... remembered past you're going to act on. And sometimes in moments of great metabolic load, the brain just goes with its own predictions and ignores what's out there in the world.

You're going to be stuck in your head, right? Every experience, every action, a combination of the remembered past, the predictions, and the sensory present. But the sensory present is there just to select which... remembered past you're going to act on. And sometimes in moments of great metabolic load, the brain just goes with its own predictions and ignores what's out there in the world.

Yeah, I think, I guess the way I, I do, I do find it frustrating at times, but, but, but only because I think we are meaning makers as an animals are meaning maker. We create meaning. We create meaning by virtue of living, like by virtue of interacting with, with things in the world, by interacting with each other. Very few meanings are given by That is that they exist independently of us.

Yeah, I think, I guess the way I, I do, I do find it frustrating at times, but, but, but only because I think we are meaning makers as an animals are meaning maker. We create meaning. We create meaning by virtue of living, like by virtue of interacting with, with things in the world, by interacting with each other. Very few meanings are given by That is that they exist independently of us.

And so what I find frustrating is that there's a lot of suffering. And understanding these basic operating principles of the brain will not remove all suffering. But it could ameliorate, it could remove some. And people don't understand that they are sometimes making their suffering worse than it has to be.

And so what I find frustrating is that there's a lot of suffering. And understanding these basic operating principles of the brain will not remove all suffering. But it could ameliorate, it could remove some. And people don't understand that they are sometimes making their suffering worse than it has to be.