In this episode, my guest is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University who is a world expert in the science of emotions. She explains what emotions are and how the brain represents and integrates signals from our body and the environment around us to create our unique emotional states. We discuss the relationship between emotions and language, how our specificity of language impacts our emotional processing, the role of facial expressions in emotions, and how emotions relate to sleep, movement, nutrition and the building and reinforcement of social bonds. We also discuss actionable tools for how to regulate feelings of uncertainty and tools to better understand the emotional states of others. This episode ought to be of interest to anyone curious about the neuroscience and psychology underlying emotions and for those who seek to better understand themselves and relate to others and the world in richer, more adaptive ways.

For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com.

Use Ask Huberman Lab, our new AI-powered platform, for a summary, clips, and insights from this episode.

Thank you to our sponsors

AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman

LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman

Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman

Momentous: https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman

Timestamps

(00:00:00) Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett

(00:03:18) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up

(00:05:46) Core Components of Emotions

(00:10:42) Facial Movement & Interpretation, Emotion

(00:19:33) Facial Expressions & Emotion, Individualization

(00:31:03) Emotion Categories, Culture & Child Development

(00:37:10) Sponsor: AG1

(00:37:50) Legal System, ‘Universal’ Emotions & Caution

(00:41:07) Language Descriptions, Differences & Emotion

(00:48:18) Questions & Assumptions; Language, Emotions & Nervous System

(00:53:40) Brain, Uncertainty & Categories

(01:03:57) Brain & Summaries; Emotions as “Multimodal Summaries”

(01:14:45) Emotional Granularity, Library Analogy

(01:19:40) Brain & Compression, Planning

(01:29:04) Labels & Generalization

(01:34:29) Movement, Sensation, Prediction & Learning

(01:42:44) Feelings of Discomfort & Action

(01:50:32) Tool: Feelings of Uncertainty, Emotion, “Affect”

(02:01:18) Tool: Experience Dimensions & Attention; Individualization

(02:08:36) Affect, Allostasis & Body Budget Analogy

(02:15:41) Depression, “Emotional Flu”

(02:20:20) Tool: Positively Shift Affect; Alcohol & Drugs; SSRIs

(02:27:40) Relationships: Savings or Taxes, Kindness

(02:36:50) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter

Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac

Disclaimer