Pratica di Shadowing: You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

Reviewer Reviewer.

⏸ In Pausa

Velocità:

262 frasi

Se le frasi sono troppo corte o troppo lunghe, clicca su Edit per modificarle.

Reviewer Reviewer.

My research lab sits about a mile from where several bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon in 2013.

The surviving bomber, Zakhar Sarnaev of Chechnya,

was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

Now, when a jury has to make the decision between life in prison and the death penalty,

they base their decision largely on whether or not the defendant feels remorseful for his actions.

Tsarnaev spoke words of apology,

but when jurors looked at his face,

all they saw was a stone-faced stare.

Now, Tsarnaev is guilty, there's no doubt about that.

He murdered and maimed innocent people,

and I'm not here to debate that.

My heart goes out to all the people who suffered.

But as a scientist, I have to tell you

that jurors do not and cannot detect remorse or any other emotion in anybody ever.

Neither can I, and neither can you.

And that's because emotions are not what we think they are.

They are not universally expressed and recognized.

They are not hardwired brain reactions that are uncontrollable.

We have misunderstood the nature of emotion for a very long time,

and understanding what emotions really are have important consequences for all of us.

I have studied emotions as a scientist for the past 25 years,

and in my lab, we have probed human faces by measuring electrical signals

that cause your facial muscles to contract to make facial expressions.

We have scrutinized the human body in emotion.

We have analyzed hundreds of physiology studies involving thousands of test subjects.

We've scanned hundreds of brains and examined every brain imaging study on emotion that has been published in the past 20 years.

And the results of all of this research is overwhelmingly consistent.

It may feel to you like your emotions are hardwired and they just trigger and happen to you,

but they don't.

You might believe that your brain is pre-wired with emotion circuits,

you know, that you're born with emotion circuits, but you're not.

In fact, none of us in this room have emotion circuits in our brain.

In fact, no brain on this planet contains emotion circuits.

So what are emotions really?

Well, strap on your seatbelt, because ...

Emotions are guesses.

They are guesses that your brain constructs in the moment where billions of brain cells are working together.

And you have more control over those guesses than you might imagine that you do.

Now, if that sounds preposterous to you or kind of crazy,

I'm right there with you,

because frankly, if I hadn't seen the evidence for myself,

decades of evidence for myself,

I am fairly sure that I wouldn't believe it either.

But the bottom line is that emotions are not built into your brain at birth.

They are just built.

To see what I mean,

have a look at this.

Right now, your brain is working like crazy.

Your neurons are firing like mad,

trying to make meaning out of this so that you see something other than black and white blobs.

Your brain is sifting through a lifetime of experience,

making thousands of guesses at the same time,

weighing the probabilities, trying to answer the question,

to answer the question, what is this most like?

Not what is it, but what is this most like in my past experience?

And this is all happening in the blink of an eye.

Now, if your brain is still struggling to find a good match and you still see black and white blobs,

then you are in a state called experiential blindness.

And I am going to cure you of your blindness.

This is my favorite part.

Are you ready to be cured?

All right, here we go.

All right.

So now, many of you see a snake.

And why is that?

Because as your brain is sifting through your past experience,

there's new knowledge there, the knowledge that came from the photograph.

And what's really cool is that that knowledge,

which you just acquired moments ago,

is changing how you experience these blobs right now.

So your brain is constructing the image of a snake where there is no snake.

And this kind of a hallucination is what neuroscientists like me call predictions.

Predictions are basically the way your brain works.

It's business as usual for your brain.

Predictions are the basis of every experience that you have.

They are the basis of every action that you take.

In fact, predictions are what allow you to understand the words that I'm speaking as they come out of my ...

.. mouth.

Exactly.

Predictions are primal.

Right?

They help us to make sense of the world in a quick and efficient way.

Your brain does not react to the world.

Using past experience, your brain predicts and constructs your experience of the world.

The way that we see emotions in others are deeply rooted in predictions, right?

So to us, it feels like we just look at someone's face

and we just read the emotion that's there in their facial expressions the way that we would read words on a page.

But actually, under the hood, your brain is predicting.

It's using past experience based on similar situations to try to make meaning.

This time, you're not making meaning of blobs,

you're making meaning of facial movements,

like the curl of a lip or the raise of an eyebrow.

And that stone-faced stare?

Well, that might be someone who is a remorseless killer.

But a stone-faced stare might also mean that someone is stoically accepting defeat,

which is in fact what Chechen culture prescribes for someone in Zakhar Tsarnaev's situation.

So the lesson here is that emotions that you seem to detect in other people

actually come in part from what's inside your own head.

100

And this is true in the courtroom,

101

but it's also true in the classroom,

102

in the bedroom, and in the boardroom.

103

And so here's my concern.

104

Tech companies, which shall remain nameless,

105

well, maybe not, you know, Google, Facebook ...

106

.. are spending millions of research dollars to build emotion detection systems.

107

And they are fundamentally asking the wrong question,

108

because they're trying to detect emotions in the face and the body.

109

But emotions aren't in your face and body.

110

Physical movements have no intrinsic emotional meaning.

111

We have to make them meaningful.

112

A human or something else has to connect them to the context,

113

and that makes them meaningful.

114

That's how we know that a smile might mean sadness,

115

and a cry might mean happiness,

116

And a stoic, still face might mean that you are angrily plotting the demise of your enemy.

117

Now, if I haven't already gone out on a limb,

118

I'll just edge out on that limb a little further

119

and tell you that the way that you experience your own emotion is exactly the same process.

120

Your brain is basically making predictions,

121

guesses that it's constructing in the moment with billions of neurons working together.

122

Now, your brain does come pre-wired to make some feelings, right?

123

Simple feelings that come from the physiology of your body.

124

So when you're born, you can make feelings like calmness and agitation, excitement, comfort, discomfort.

125

But these simple feelings are not emotions.

126

They're actually with you every waking moment of your life.

127

They are simple summaries of what's going on inside your body,

128

kind of like a barometer.

129

But they have very little detail,

130

and you need that detail to know what to do next,

131

what do you do about these feelings.

132

And so how does your brain give you that detail?

133

Well, that's what predictions are.

134

Predictions link the sensations in your body that give you these simple feelings with what's going on around you in the world,

135

so that you know what to do.

136

And sometimes those constructions are emotions.

137

So, for example, if you were to walk into a bakery,

138

your brain might predict that you will encounter that delicious aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

139

I know my brain would predict the delicious aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies,

140

and our brains might cause our stomachs to churn a little bit to prepare for eating those cookies.

141

And if we are correct,

142

if, in fact, some cookies have just come out of the oven,

143

then our brains will have constructed hunger,

144

and we are prepared to munch down those cookies and digest them in a very efficient way,

145

meaning that we can eat a lot of them,

146

which would be a really good thing.

147

You guys aren't not laughing enough, I'm totally serious.

148

It's a really ...

149

But here's the thing, that churning stomach,

150

if it occurs in a different situation,

151

it can have a completely different meaning.

152

So if your brain were to predict a churning stomach in,

153

say, a hospital room while you're waiting for test results,

154

then your brain will be constructing dread or worry or anxiety,

155

and it might cause you to maybe wring your hands or take a deep breath or even cry.

156

Right?

157

Same physical sensations, same churning stomach, different experience.

158

And so the lesson here is that emotions which seem to happen to you are actually made by you.

159

You are not at the mercy of mythical emotion circuits,

160

which are buried deep inside some ancient part of your brain.

161

You have more control over your emotions than you think you do.

162

I don't mean that you can just snap your fingers

163

and change how you feel the way that you would change your clothes.

164

But your brain is wired so that if you change the ingredients that your brain uses to make emotion,

165

then you can transform your emotional life.

166

So if you change those ingredients today,

167

you're basically teaching your brain how to predict differently tomorrow.

168

And this is what I call being the architect of your experience.

169

So here's an example.

170

All of us have had a nervous feeling before a test, right?

171

But some people experience crippling anxiety before a test.

172

They have test anxiety.

173

Based on past experiences of taking tests,

174

their brains predict a hammering heartbeat,

175

sweaty hands, so much so that they are unable to actually take the test.

176

They don't perform well, And sometimes they not only fail courses,

177

but they actually might fail college.

178

But here's the thing.

179

A hammering heartbeat is not necessarily anxiety.

180

It could be that your body is preparing to do battle and ace that test.

181

Or, you know, give a talk in front of hundreds of people on a stage where you're being filmed.

182

I'm serious.

183

And research shows that when students learn to make determination,

184

energize this kind of energized determination instead of anxiety,

185

they perform better on tests.

186

And that determination seeds their brain to predict differently in the future,

187

so that they can get their butterflies flying in formation.

188

And if they do that often enough,

189

they not only can pass a test,

190

but it'll be easier for them to pass their courses,

191

and they might even finish college,

192

which has a huge impact on their future earning potential.

193

So I call this emotional intelligence in action.

194

Now, you can cultivate this emotional intelligence yourself and use it in your everyday life.

195

So just, you know, imagine waking up in the morning.

196

I'm sure you've had this experience, I know I have.

197

You wake up in the morning,

198

And when you're merging into consciousness,

199

you feel this horrible dread,

200

you know, this, like, real wretchedness,

201

and immediately your mind starts to race.

202

Right?

203

You start to think about all the crap that you have to do at work,

204

and that mountain of email,

205

which you will never dig yourself out of, ever.

206

Right?

207

And the phone calls you have to return,

208

and that important meeting that you have across town,

209

and you're going to have to fight traffic to get there,

210

which means you're going to be late picking your kids up,

211

and your dog is sick,

212

and what are you going to make for dinner?

213

What is wrong with your life?

214

What's wrong with my life?

215

That mind racing is prediction.

216

Your brain is searching to find an explanation for those sensations in your body that you experience as wretchedness,

217

just like you did with the blobby image.

218

So your brain is trying to explain what caused those sensations so that you know what to do about them.

219

But those sensations might not be an indication that anything is wrong with your life.

220

They might have a purely physical cause.

221

Maybe you're tired, maybe you didn't sleep enough,

222

maybe you're hungry, maybe you're dehydrated.

223

The next time that you feel intense distress,

224

ask yourself, could this have a purely physical cause?

225

Is it possible that you can transform emotional suffering into just mere physical discomfort?

226

Now, I am not suggesting to you

227

that you can just perform a couple of Jedi mind tricks

228

and then talk yourself out of being depressed or anxious or any kind of serious condition.

229

But I am telling you that you have more control over your emotions than you might imagine,

230

and that you have the capacity to turn down the dial on emotional suffering

231

and its consequences for your life by learning how to construct your experiences differently.

232

And all of us can do this,

233

and with a little practice,

234

we can get really good at it, you know, like driving.

235

At first, it takes a lot of effort,

236

but eventually, it becomes pretty automatic.

237

Now, I don't know about you,

238

but I find this to be a really empowering and inspiring message.

239

And the fact that it's backed up by decades of research makes me also happy as a scientist.

240

But I have to also warn you that it does come with some fine print,

241

because more control also means more responsibility.

242

If you are not at the mercy of mythical emotion circuits,

243

which are buried deep inside your brain somewhere and which trigger automatically, then who's responsible?

244

Who's responsible when you behave badly?

245

You are.

246

Not because you're culpable for your emotions,

247

but because the actions and the experiences that you make today become your brain's predictions for tomorrow.

248

Sometimes we are responsible for something,

249

not because we're to blame,

250

but because we're the only ones who can change it.

251

Now, responsibility is a big word.

252

It's so big, in fact,

253

that sometimes people feel the need to resist the scientific evidence that emotions are built and not built in.

254

The idea that we are responsible for our own emotions seems very hard to swallow.

255

But what I'm suggesting to you is you don't have to choke on that idea.

256

You just take a deep breath,

257

maybe get yourself a glass of water if you need to, and embrace it.

258

Embrace that responsibility, because it is the path to a healthier body,

259

a more just and informed legal system,

260

and a more flexible and potent emotional life.

261

Thank you.

262

you

TRENDING

Popolari

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

☕ Offrici un caffè

ShadowingEnglish rimane gratuito al 100% grazie al tuo supporto. I costi del server e IA sono elevati — il tuo caffè ci aiuta ad andare avanti! 🙏

Dona via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – Pratica di Shadowing in Inglese

Parla inglese fluentemente usando la tecnica dello Shadowing. Ascolta video di YouTube con madrelingua, ripeti frase per frase e costruisci una pronuncia e fluidità reale — usata da studenti IELTS in tutto il mondo.

Pratica di Shadowing: You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

Popolari

Perché praticare parlando con questo video?

Grammatica ed Espressioni nel Contesto

Trappole di Pronuncia Comuni

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Pratica di Shadowing: You aren't at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them | Lisa Feldman Barrett - Impara a parlare inglese con YouTube

Scarica l'app

Perché praticare parlando con questo video?

Grammatica ed Espressioni nel Contesto

Trappole di Pronuncia Comuni

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?