Most Replayed Moment: Anxiety Is Just A Prediction! Rewrite Old Stories and Build Emotional Safety

Steven Bartlett (0:00)

You know, when you're in a meeting, taking notes, trying to focus, but your devices keep pinging notifications. For me, that's really annoying. And usually, it makes your brain start to wander away and fall into distraction. This was happening to my producer, Jack, and we were chatting about it when I realized that I knew the exact product that would fix this problem for him. It's from our sponsor, Remarkable. Essentially, it's a paper tablet with no notifications, so it's far less distracting than most tablets. It's called the Remarkable Paper Pro Move, and it really does look, feel, and sound the same as writing on paper, which is really nice if you spend a lot of time taking notes. But because it's digital, your handwritten notes can be converted into typed text, and then you can send it over email or Slack, or just keep editing it within the app. All of their products have no blue light, which for someone who looks at screens as much as I do, is something I really appreciate. Remarkable is offering a 50-day trial on their products for free, and at the end of that time, if it's not what you're looking for, you simply get all of your money back by sending it back. Give the present of being present. Find the perfect distraction-free paper tablet at remarkable.com. The Predictive Brain The Predictive Brain is this idea that I only pretty much know from you. I'd never heard it before. When we say the Predictive Brain, what does that mean? And what does it not mean?

Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:22)

So, when you are living your everyday life...

Steven Bartlett (1:26)

Yeah, like right now.

Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:28)

Like right now. So, right now, I'm guessing that I'm saying things to you and you're perceiving what I'm saying and then you're reacting to it. That's how it feels to you, right?

Steven Bartlett (1:39)

Yes.

Lisa Feldman Barrett (1:39)

Okay, and that's how it feels to me too. So, we sense and then we react. That's the way most people experience themselves in the world. That's not actually what's happening under the hood. Really what's happening is that the brain, your brain is not reacting, it's predicting. And what that means is if we were to stop time right now, just freeze time, your brain would be in a state and it would be remembering past experiences that are similar to this state as a way of predicting what to do next, like literally in the next moment. Should your eyes move, should your heart rate go up, should your breathing change, should your blood vessels dilate or should they constrict, should you prepare to stand, right, movements. And these movements, the preparation for movement, literal copies of those signals become predictions for what you will see and hear and smell and taste, and think, and feel. So under the hood, your brain is predicting what movements it should engage in next and as a consequence, what you will experience because of those movements. So you act first and then you sense. You don't sense and then react. You predict action and then you sense.

Steven Bartlett (3:22)

So give me a example which brings this to light of how my brain is predicting and then taking action.

Lisa Feldman Barrett (3:30)

Okay. So right now, you and I are having a conversation and I'm speaking and you're listening. And what's really happening in your brain is that based on many gazillion repetitions, of listening to language, your brain is predicting, literally predicting every single word that will come out of my...

Steven Bartlett (4:04)

Yeah, okay.

Lisa Feldman Barrett (4:06)

And how surprising would it have been if I didn't say mouth, I said some other orifice of my body that words were coming out of. That would have been pretty surprising because your brain is predicting that. Your brain is always predicting. And it's correcting those predictions when they're incorrect.

And I have this video that I often show when I'm giving a talk to scientists or to civilians, I'm giving a talk and it creates a situation where they can predict something and they can feel that a prediction is not just this abstract kind of thought. It's your brain is literally changing the firing of its own sensory neurons to anticipate incoming sensations. So you start to feel these sensations before the signals actually arrive for you to perceive them. You start to have the experience before the world gives you those signals.

Steven Bartlett (5:13)

I've read, I think it was in your book, but it might have been elsewhere, about the example of being thirsty.

Lisa Feldman Barrett (5:18)

Yes. So when you drink, so say you're super thirsty and you drink a big glass of water, when do you stop being thirsty? Almost immediately. But actually, it takes 20 minutes for that water to be absorbed into your bloodstream and make its way to the brain to tell the brain that you are no longer in need of fluid. Because across millions of opportunities, you have learned that certain movements now and certain sensory signals now will result in that mental state. Or here's another example. So right now, keep your eyes on me, you're looking right at me and in your mind's eye, I want you to imagine a Macintosh apple, like not a computer, but like an actual piece of fruit.