シャドーイング練習: Neuroscientist Answers Emotion Questions | Tech Support | WIRED - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

I'm neuroscientist and psychologist Richard Davidson.

Let's answer your questions from the internet.

This is Emotions Support.

At Polaro asks, stress will shrink your brain?

Really?

Yes, really.

The data here are quite clear.

Stress does have effects on the brain and it can shrink the brain

and it shrinks the area that grows new brain cells, the hippocampus.

Wendy Stella 06 asks, are women really more sensitive and emotional than men in general?

If you take thousands of men and thousands of women and you compare them, you will find these slight differences where women may be more sensitive to emotional cues than men.

In certain contexts, they may be more expressive of emotion than men.

But the variation within gender far exceeds the variation between gender.

And so in my view, focusing on these gender differences is really a little bit misplaced.

At Riri Yiri, why do we even have feelings?

Feelings and emotions are found throughout evolutionary history.

They're not just found in humans.

In the case of an animal who may be confronted by a predator, the experience of fear will motivate the animal to run or to fight.

we have feelings to navigate important life decisions.

They are really critical in enabling us to make important decisions.

For example, should we be with a significant other?

Should we take one job versus another job?

Those are not decisions that we make based on a simple, cold, cognitive calculus.

We use our emotions, our feelings to decide.

At Alpaca Aurelius, holy crap,

Botox impairs your ability to process other people's emotions because it prevents your face from mirroring someone's reaction.

Botox is truly soul-sucking.

Botox does effectively paralyze your facial muscles.

And one of the things

that we've learned over the last 20 years in research on emotion is

that not only does the brain control the face to produce emotional expressions,

but emotional expressions feed back information to the brain to help the brain modulate its activity.

When we are interacting with another person, we often engage in contagious emotional expressions.

So we are simulating the emotions that another person may experience.

This is part of empathy.

And if we can't do that because of Botox, we are literally deprived of a major mechanism through

which we can make inferences about both our own emotion as well as another person's emotion.

At Adam Fair in 1996 says, chemical imbalance is a myth, but is it really?

Studies done have shown that a serotonin imbalance may not be the real cause of depression, but that's just one chemical.

The body is made up of chemicals.

So unless you've researched them all, you can't make that initial statement.

It is true that serotonin is just one chemical.

And even though drugs to treat depression primarily act on serotonin, it doesn't mean that serotonin is the cause,

nor does it mean that it's the most important chemical involved in depression.

In fact, it's likely that the serotonin just triggers a whole chemical cascade unleashed by taking this drug.

And so the cause of the depression and the cause of the improvement in depression goes way beyond serotonin.

We are still discovering many new chemicals in the brain and the body.

We are living in this chemical soup that is highly complex.

The idea that there is going to be a single molecule associated with a specific disease

or a specific emotion is absolutely a myth.

Andrea Labuti MD asks, Are autistic individuals hypersensitive to emotions?

It depends because autism is not a homogeneous category.

It's quite heterogeneous.

There are different subtypes of autism.

And there are some subgroups of autism that are hypersensitive in general.

This would include being hypersensitive to emotion.

One of the things that we see in a subgroup of autistic individuals is that they show gaze aversion.

They don't look directly at a person's face because they're

so sensitive to emotion and it's so arousing for them to watch another person's face that they have to actually turn away.

And this gaze aversion starts very early in life.

It's one of the first symptoms of autism that expresses itself.

At NoKizzyKathleen, you ever get that sad feeling in your tummy, like you're okay, but your tummy is like, no, you're really not?

There are 200 million neurons in the gut.

Stuff that goes on in the brain is communicated to the tummy, and stuff that goes on in the tummy is fed back to the brain.

So our gut feelings are real, and there's information that occurs there that's gonna be modulating activity in the brain,

and this is all part of the mandala of emotion.

It's important that we consider emotions to be embodied and to involve all of these different bodily systems.

Had Ariasaurus says, I need my brain chemistry literally altered.

Like, is there drugs that can be ingested so that our brain physically can't process emotions?

We know

that there are medications available to change the brain these medications

are used to treat people with various kinds of emotional disorders like depression and anxiety.

So there are these drugs which do affect brain chemistry and they are sometimes really important to use if they're used judiciously.

However, in my view, we are medicating people too readily in our society.

We have too low a threshold for administering these medications.

They often have lots of side effects.

And we know that there are ways to change the brain that don't require medication.

We can actually change our brains by intentionally cultivating our minds.

Meditation is one such way, but there are others.

For example, we know from hard-nosed scientific research that cognitive therapy can change the brain.

Cognitive therapy is an empirically well-validated strategy to treat depression and anxiety,

and it involves teaching people to think differently about their thoughts.

We should at least try these non-invasive methods first before we try the more invasive methods of medication.

Atkirtjgray asks, does the internet make us more empathic and emotionally intelligent or less?

I would say that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the internet makes us less emotionally empathic,

particularly for members of the outgroup because one of the things

that we find in the internet is that we're fed information that is consistent with our ideology and with our beliefs.

And this is leading us to become more polarized.

And this may make us empathic for our in-group, but it's certainly not making us more empathic for members of our out-group.

When we interact with people virtually and are deprived of the immediate feedback of their physical presence,

their facial expression, we often will be less inhibited, less constrained because we don't have that feedback.

So I think there is some danger in becoming overly expressive in perhaps inappropriate ways interacting with people online.

At Emily Aku asks, is cringe an emotion?

Cringe is an expression, a facial expression.

It may be a vocal expression, and it probably has several different emotions that are melded together.

It may be a little bit of disgust, a little bit of contempt, a little bit of anger, a little bit of sadness.

It could be a conglomeration of these negative emotions.

It's a complex emotion.

We can think of it in that way.

100

But the actual cringe itself is an expression displayed in response to someone,

101

for example, making a terrible and inappropriate joke in the wrong setting.

102

At Paul Ekman, who's a very famous emotion scientist, a very dear friend of mine and a collaborator, asks how many emotions are there?

103

We have here a scheme developed by another well-known scientist of emotion, Robert Pluchik.

104

And Pluchik argues that there are a number of primary emotions, such as joy, trust, fear,

105

surprise, and their opposites that are sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation.

106

We have this circumplex, and the outer ring are emotions that are less arousing.

107

And as we get closer and closer to the center, the emotions are more arousing.

108

We begin with serenity, maybe thought of as a low arousal positive emotion, then joy, and then ecstasy.

109

Ecstasy would be a higher arousal, positive emotion.

110

And similarly, we can go from apprehension in this case to fear to terror.

111

According to this scheme, there are emotions that are opposite to one another.

112

For example, joy and sadness are opposite to one another.

113

According to other scientists, however, emotions may be less dichotomous in that way, less binary.

114

As someone who has spent quite a bit of time with the Dalai Lama in research that we've done, the Dalai Lama, I know,

115

has expressed serenity along with sadness simultaneously.

116

And so the idea that these are always opposite in this way, I think, is a little too simplistic.

117

These are all Western conceptions of emotion.

118

In non-Western cultures, the framework for emotion is likely to be quite different.

119

And so it's important that we not consider this a final say on how emotions should be parsed.

120

In some non-Western cultures, a major division is made between emotions that are wholesome, that are conducive to our well-being, and emotions that are unwholesome.

121

So, for example, anger is an emotion that would be considered an unwholesome emotion in these other frameworks.

122

Curious Earn Curiouser asks, why is smiling contagious?

123

Smiling is contagious, and it really invites the question about emotions being contagious more generally.

124

Research has been done starting in neonates just after they're born when they're in the nursing unit in a hospital.

125

When one baby begins to cry, the other babies start to cry too.

126

That is a form of emotional contagion.

127

It begins that early, really when we're first born.

128

And so we are wired to respond to the emotions of others.

129

This is a very helpful insight because there are times

130

when we may want to change the mood in a meeting or in a room by laughing,

131

for example, or smiling we can have it spread to the other members of this group.

132

At iWigdahl, how does meditation rewire the brain?

133

When we cultivate wholesome habits of mind through meditation, it turns out that our brains literally change.

134

Meditation changes two major systems in the brain.

135

It changes our capacity to pay attention.

136

The prefrontal cortex is majorly involved because this is the area of self-regulation.

137

And this area is strengthened by meditation.

138

The second change that occurs in the brain with meditation is focused on emotion.

139

And meditation improves our ability to regulate our emotions,

140

particularly in changing the connectivity among different networks in the brain.

141

Most of the time, our self-related thinking, our beliefs about ourselves, really hijack our perception of reality.

142

And what meditation does is it alters that.

143

It shifts our connectivity so that we can see that our thoughts about ourselves, our beliefs, our expectations are there,

144

but we can appreciate them for what they are.

145

So this is how meditation affects the wiring in our brain.

146

At Elon Konami asks, I need to get smarter.

147

Anyone have any hacks for IQ or any activities they can do to increase neuroplasticity?

148

The single best way that's non-pharmacological and safe is something that may be surprising to viewers, and that is aerobic exercise.

149

Neuroplasticity is a word we use to refer to the fact

150

that the brain can change in response to experience or to training, and it includes many different mechanisms, forming new connections, decreasing connections,

151

kind of sculpting the brain.

152

There are also new neurons that actually can grow, a process that we call neurogenesis.

153

The real question is, how can we combine an increase in neuroplasticity with training the mind to improve our emotions?

154

And there, I think, a combination of physical exercise and meditation is perhaps an ideal combination.

155

Let me introduce something that I think is really totally new, the possibility of contemplative aerobics.

156

Please try it.

157

At the girl Z asks, where are my emotions?

158

Why can't I feel anything?

159

I want to feel.

160

People sometimes report that they don't feel their emotions and that can be due to many different reasons.

161

They may be having emotions that they're not experiencing consciously.

162

It also may be that they're simply not having those emotions.

163

The former we refer to as alexithymia,

164

where a person is having difficulty labeling or naming or becoming aware of emotions that they have.

165

The latter case is more like psychopathy.

166

There are big differences among people in the extent to which they feel their emotions.

167

We talked about the fact that when we have emotions, we don't always consciously feel them.

168

One thing that you can try is to simply sit quietly.

169

When you have an emotion, bring your awareness into your body.

170

And you can scan your body, starting at the head

171

and going down through all the different parts of your body

172

going into the face into your neck into your shoulders into your torso and simply

173

bring awareness to these different parts of the body on a regular basis

174

and see if that can help to connect you to the emotions

175

that you feel at reformer allusium asks a series of questions what What is emotional maturity?

176

How can it be measured?

177

Is emotional maturity connected to age?

178

What age can we be emotionally matured?

179

How is it objective and what makes it beyond a mere opinion?

180

Emotional maturity is probably most akin to showing high levels of emotional intelligence

181

and emotional intelligence includes the capacity to effectively regulate our emotions and also the capacity to be aware of our own emotions,

182

to be self-aware.

183

There are simple forms of meditation that we know can improve a person's emotional maturity or their emotional intelligence.

184

There are ways to measure this,

185

including really hard-nosed ways in the brain that involve looking at the interaction between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala,

186

as well as behaviorally to see how this is expressed in the real world in our everyday behavior.

187

At Gmonster7000 asks, wait, what goes on in our brains when we laugh?

188

Are our neurons laughing too?

189

Laughing might serve as a kind of emotional reset.

190

It's a big change that can occur and in a very quick way reset our neural circuits.

191

There are some cool insights that we've gleaned about laughter from the study of neuroscience

192

and in particular from the study of patients who've had damage to one part of their brain or another.

193

It turns out that people who've had damage to their right hemisphere, where their left hemisphere is preserved, are more likely to laugh.

194

So the area of the brain that is preserved is the one that's laughing.

195

And so when the right side is damaged, it may disinhibit the left side of the brain so it becomes more active.

196

That's been called in the scientific literature, pathological laughter.

197

They laugh at things that most of us would probably not laugh at.

198

And this has given us some insight that the left hemisphere of the brain, particularly the left frontal region of the brain,

199

may be associated with certain kinds of positive emotion that laughter is associated with.

200

At XYS Hearts wants to know, why am I so mad?

201

Madness or anger is typically triggered by something outside of us, a systemic injustice, our goals being thwarted.

202

That is perceived in the brain.

203

If we are really mad and we're trying to regulate that madness, the prefrontal cortex, which is here,

204

is definitely gonna be involved.

205

It is involved in self-regulation, including the regulation of emotion.

206

It is larger in humans than it is in any other species.

207

And this is likely associated with the fact

208

that humans can self-regulate in ways that are far more sophisticated than in any other species.

209

But there's one downside to that.

210

In addition to the capacity to self-regulate, the prefrontal cortex also confers the possibility of dysregulation.

211

Psychiatric problems are far more prevalent in humans than they are in any other species.

212

And that is because of the prefrontal cortex.

213

Atkar Sopples asks, I always wonder what love actually is.

214

Is love a gesture?

215

Is it a feeling?

216

Is it an emotion?

217

Is it a combination of all three?

218

Many years ago, when I first met the Dalai Lama in 1992,

219

I made a commitment to him that I would put compassion on the scientific map as best I could.

220

And I think over the last 20 years, the field has really been quite successful in that.

221

I would now like to do the same thing for love.

222

There is very little serious research on love.

223

We do know that love includes areas of the brain that we typically think of as being involved in emotion.

224

Clearly, love involves going beyond oneself, a dissolution, at least in part, of self-other boundaries.

225

Exactly how this occurs in a scientific or biological framework is very difficult to specify at this point in time.

226

It's going to involve changes in connectivity between the default mode of the brain and other circuits,

227

particularly circuits involved in positive emotion.

228

So those are all the questions for today.

229

Really great questions.

230

Thank you so much.

231

And thank you for watching Emotion Support.

シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由

シャドーイング（Shadowing）は、もともとプロの通訳者養成プログラムで開発された言語学習法で、多言語習得者として知られるDr. Alexander Arguelles によって広く普及されました。方法はシンプルですが非常に効果的：ネイティブスピーカーの英語を聞きながら、1〜2秒の遅延で声に出してすぐに繰り返す——まるで「影（shadow）」のように話者を追いかけます。文法ドリルや受動的なリスニングと異なり、シャドーイングは脳と口の筋肉が同時にリアルタイムで英語を処理・再現することを強制します。研究により、発音精度、抑揚、リズム、連音、リスニング力、そして会話の流暢さが大幅に向上することが確認されています。IELTSスピーキング対策や自然な英語コミュニケーションを目指す方に特におすすめです。

シャドーイング練習: Neuroscientist Answers Emotion Questions | Tech Support | WIRED - 動画で英語スピーキングを学ぶ

この動画で身につける英語スピーキングスキル

聞き取りに注意すべき発音・リンキング

ネイティブのように話すコツ：リズムとストレス

シャドーイングとは？英語上達に効果的な理由