Dr. Allan Schore: How Relationships Shape Your Brain
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I Andrew huberman, and i'm a professor of neurobiology and opposition logy at stanford school of medicine. My guess today is doctor alan shore.

Doctor Allen shore is a clinical psycho analyst and is the world expert in how childhood attachment patterns impact our adult relationships, including romantic relationships, friendships and professional relationships, as well as our relationship to ourselves. Doctor shore is on the faculty in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the university of california, los Angeles school of medicine. He is also the author of several important books, including right rain, psychotherapy and development of the unconscious mind.

Today's discussion where doctor shore is an extremely important one for everyone to hear, to understand themselves and to understand the people in their lives. why? Well, we all go through the first twenty four months of age.

You would be listening to this if you hadn't. And during that first twenty four months of age, your brain develops in a particular way depending on how you interacted with your primary caretaker, namely your mother, but also your father or other primary caretakers. In that first twenty four months, your right brain and your left brain mediate very specific, but different processes. For instance, today you learn from doctor shore that your right brain circuitry, that is, the ifc circuitry on the right hand side of your brain, are involved in developing a very specific type of resonance with your primary caretaker that transitions from states of calm and quiescence that you both share simultaneously to states that are considered up. States of excitement, of enthusiasm, of being wide, died in the transitioning back in forth between those states, as doctor shore explains, is critical to our emotional development and how we form attachments later.

So if you've heard, for instance, of avoiding attachment, anxious attachment or secure attachment today, you'll understand why those particular attachment styles develop, how they translate from early life to your adolescents, teen years and and in fact, how those childhood attachment patterns, which of course we can't control for ourselves but we can't control for our children, how we can modify them through very specific protocols in order to achieve Better relations with both others and with ourselves. It's indeed a very special conversation. And to my knowledge, unlike any other discussions about relationships, neuroscience or psychology, that certainly I have heard before, and I fully expect that for you, IT will be as well.

Before you begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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A, canada, U. K. Select countries in the u. In australia. Again, that's eight sleep that slash huberman. And now for my discussion with doctor alan shore. Doctor Allan shore, welcome.

Nice to be here to .

kick things off. I have a simple question, which is, what percentage of our thinking in our behavior do you think IT is governed by our conscious mind? Adversus our unconscious mind?

You understand that I was trained in seo analysis and a psychodynamic psychotherapist in addition to a scientists and our scientists sts. So the unconciously, something that I have been aware and have been writing about, it's a central part of what i'm writing about to this day, is essentially, as we're going to see. I'm suggesting that the right brain is the unctious minded.

So when you ask what how much of things really are cautious and how much are on crashes, i'm also looking at that neurobiological ally in terms of how much of activity is going on. The right brain, the right brain is always processing information, always, especially emotional information at levels, beef conscious awareness, especially when you're in in an emotional interaction. So how much that really are, things are cautious.

I would say that when IT comes to the basic motivations of why we do what we do, ninety five to ninety percent of that is on conscious. And there has been data to show that that is the case. And most, although we think that our conscious mind literally is making all of these decisions underneath that at all point, some time the unconscious is Operating used to be thought that the uncaught ous only comes fourth in dreams at night.

We now know that this right brain is reading. And cautious communications between us communications is is safe to be with you. You understand what i'm saying, that really the critical ones always Operating and much more important than we have thought itself.

let's start thinking about and talking about this right brain versus left brain thing. And what i'd like to know is when we come into this world, how much lateralization, as we call IT, how much right versus left brain specialization is there at the time when we exit the moon, when we take our first breath?

The answer to that is, is, is pretty clear at this point in time. And incidently, some of these questions about the unconditional are provided by neurobiology. But essentially, here's what we know.

There was the discoveries that would be made in the eighties and the nineties about the human brain growth spurt. The human brain growth spurt occurs from the last dime method pregNancy through the second until the third year of life. All of that time is a period of right hemisphere dominance.

And actually, there have been six major studies in our sites, laboratory around the world that i've shown that the right hemisphere is done in during that period of time. In fact, there's recent study in mexico where they looked at two to three months, sixty eight months, nine to twelve months at each point. And thai, they noticed that the right hemisphere was accelerating its growth.

The left was not. So the right is dominant very early. In fact, there's evidence to show, even in utero, there is a right lateralization. And I remember the lateralization is part of all systems. And what is lateralization that not only the critical areas, but the sub cortical areas that that so if you take, let's say, the amygdala, there's a difference between the right in middle and the left middle IT, and again, the right hemisphere. So the answer to that is put IT very clearly now. The left hemisphere does not come into a growth until the end of the second year and into the third year up to that point, which means everything about attachment is about right brain dynamics.

Does that mean that everything about attachment is occurring in the first, you know, twenty four months? Yes.

absolutely. And it's occurring during that brain growth spirit while the right atmosphere. So essentially what you have now is that in the baby's brain, that babies brain is now in a right brain, grow spirt.

And the mother now is shaping that baby's right brain through the attachment mechanism, through her regulation of that brain. And so she's help shaping that brain for Better or worse. And incidentally, that would means also not only secure attachments, but also the matter because it's for Better, worse.

It's also the early evolution of insecure attachments, and we'll talk about what those insecure attachment, all of those really are being shaped by the right. What's more, there's evidence to show that IT goes right hemisphere, then IT goes left hemisphere, and then IT goes back into left and back and right along the life, along the lifespan. So although you have a tremendous growth spurt more than any other time in the first two, two and have three years of life, think now about adolescence. Where you have another growth spurt.

Is adolescence marked by a right brain?

Growth spurt is marked by the initially right and then IT goes left. So essentially with puberty and with the onset of text and entries and and and shifts now into another growth spread that point in time. Uh which means just for the record, now the attachment relationship, which is essentially gone to.

Be about how we regulate our emotions, because I will be talking about attachment is about the communication of emotions, right brain to right brain, in the first two years of life, and about the regulation of emotions in that same period of time at that. But ultimately, that leads to the strategies that we have for affect regulation. For an attachment is essentially affect regulation, affect communication and affect regulation.

So now what you're looking at, if you have a mother and infant, they are communicating with each other, right brain to right brain. And how are they doing IT by face, voice and gesture? The mother is now reading the expressions of the baby's face, the visual, the auditory, the positive of the voice, and then attacked out.

So she's picking up these kinds of communications that are coming out. That baby tacked out just visual and she's not picking up those communications now. She's resonating with those communications.

And then SHE is gonna gulp those communications. And that's essentially what it's about in the end. What we have is strategies of effect regulation, how we regulate effect. But the rest of our lives depends upon the attachment relationship of the first two years, which is the right brain to right brain connection. Now there have been hundreds, thousands of studies on attachment, as you are aware, at this point in time.

But the key to IT, literally, I I began this in one thousand nine hundred and ninety four with my first book, affect regulation in the origin, the self, the neurobiology of emotion development. Okay, remember, boby was studying attachment in the sixties, but the problem of emotion really was not picked up. And early on, when they were looking at attachment, they were looking at behaviors and they were looking at cognition. So if you know the attack and literally remember the strange situation, yeah.

just to remind listeners, i've talked about this on previous podcasts. Le, provide a link to that segment. A strange situation can briefly be described as parent, and usually mother and child come into the clinic, they deliberately leave the baby with a caretaker.

This is of a suda day care types situation. Mother leaves, and then there's a lot of attention paid to how the infant or Young child, total ler, whatever age they were looking at reacts. Are they nervous? Are they able to engage and play um and then they look at the return of the mother and how they react to that.

And they was this classification of behaviors along the lines of secure attached. In secure attached, there was A A A category ation of kind of um in a malgre of different things, these so called d babies that were kind of a bunch of other things. And this is where um we hear a lot.

Now what is about secure, insecure and anxious and avoided and adult relationship styles? There's been a lot written about that and talk about that. We don't have time to go into all that in detail, but this is what doctor shares referring to. I'm really intrigued by this idea that there is a right brain, left brain dominance that takes place throughout the lifespan. Has IT been carefully mapped into adulthood, such that we can say as a function of chronological age, when somebody hits the early thirties, that they're more right brain or left brain dominant, or is IT more developmental milestones as opposed .

to chronological age? I think it's developmental miles is there. You know, i'm thinking that member eric characts, and talking about different stages of life and how you have a high rocky here, literally, because attachment is a high rocky IT starts subcritical and that IT goes critical.

So what he that was that there are changes along the line and that if fits with that, so the attachment relationship is there at later points in time. And really, what he does, IT guides us through our relationships with other people. IT certainly guides us through strategies, what to do with stress, and that way that we do what that stress is now going to depend upon how the mother is regulating that baby stress during a critical period.

Now the the term critical period is a is an important one here too, because again, at at the first two years of life, it's the right brain is is in that critical period there. But that leads to strategies of affect, regulation of how we do with stress, but also how we do with novel situations. And again, all of IT has to do with the motion.

Now I jump there because I I talked about there was attaching models move from behavior to a cognition, an to emotion. And essentially the first book that I wrote was on the neurobiology of emotional development and the nineteen and ninety four. When I came out with that book, I was about the same time that until in your dassie came out with his book, and really, IT was not until the mid nineties, partly because of the neural imaging which was coming during, you remember, the decade of the brain, that emotion really now became a matter that science was looking for the first time.

The point that i'm making here is that attachment is not psychological. It's psychotic ological. And there was always this rift between the psychological and the biological. But when you're talking about emotions, you not only talk about psychological events, you're talking about physiological events that are associated with those events.

For example, the physiology of the stress response of physiology of the sympathetic nervous system, which is energy expanding in the paris sympathetic nervous system, which is energy conserving IT. So the mother is a regulator of that. And the way that he is a regulator of that baby is that she's tracking that babies user levels, she's tracking that babies emotions as they change in time, moment to moment, and then she's synchronizing with that.

And that allows her now to be able to regulate. So we're going from the recognizing that babies emotions synchronizing with those emotions and then being an affect regulators. So the mother who was securely attached now is a good effect regulator of that baby SHE not only is an affect regulator of the negative states of the baby, because negative states, negative effects are adaptive by definition.

baby cries, mother nurses baby.

and there is a signal SHE sending. They are literally, and the mother then, intuitive ly knows, intuitive ly knows she's not using her left brain to figure out what to do with that baby. She's doing IT intuitive ly and intuition tion as a right brain function.

And she's regulating that baby implicitly. Now let's go back of a implicit to explicit. Okay, you're seeing a lot now about the shift from explicit to implicit.

Something that is implicit goes on at levels beneath awareness. So when he is intuitive knowing what to do that right now, this baby is down regulating too much. He wants to bring that baby up.

Should now use your tone of voice, literally, to raise that baby up into a more excited state. Or if the baby is deregulated, simple, that a rosal SHE knows how to downregulates that. And should down regulate that by her facial expression, by the tone of a voice now, now a tone of a voice now, trying to soften in and to quiet down.

So essentially, attachment is is the regulator of arousal of emotional arsa. And that emotional arouse also includes the automatic nervous system. So what we have here is the regulation attachment of olympic system, the emotion processing olympics system, positive and negative, and the autonomic terrors system.

So they are limbic, autonomic circuits, and no circuits are in the right brain. Then I want this matter as IT turns out, the right brain has a control system of attachment, that since the right brain is there first before the left, because there is no speech at two years, she's regulating this baby. At two months, six months, twelve months, all of IT is occurring non bearable.

She's doing this implicitly, not explicitly. The left hemisphere processes explicit stimuli, catches stimuli, rational stimulus, not there. Everything is doing, done implicitly, be deef levels of awareness.

And uh, again, that allows us to be the regulation. So attachment theory, my attachment theory, regulation theory is essentially, attachment is interactive regulation. Stay nina.

Ultimately, what we have are two forms of IT of a regulation. What we're doing is we're regulating the self, right? You, I mean, it's it's the subject self, which is in the right hemisphere.

The left is objective self. The left is verbal conscious. She's regulating the right hemisphere, and she's doing that again by tracking the baby's emotional states, as I said IT. But again, what the child learns now from that is that her right brain is becoming more and more complex from the first year to the second year.

And it's going to turn out some of these functions that are more complex are being also stimulated by the mother of and ultimately, by the end of the second year, that baby can regulate its emotional states by itself. And it's right, brain. But we have two forms of regulation.

You can regulate your states by auto regulation, by yourself. The words you're not with other human beings at this point in time. You have a an efficient right brain which can regulate.

And is certainly what we're talking about here is the regulation of the middle by the right over of final core tracks. The right over of fund core tracks is the highest level of the right hemisphere. It's also has the most sophisticated.

And the latest evolving parts of the brain are in the right frontal cortex, at the left, the right over to front, not the left source. Attn cortex is the key. This is. So what we learn from attachment here again, is how to both in a cigaret attachment, how to order, regulate your emotions when you're apart from people.

Now, the orient, you go to quiet place at this point in time, you're regulating yourself, downside to speak, and you're getting a nice regulation of the emigre by the right overall fun cortex, or interactive regulation, which is now you go to one other human being. We got another human being under time stress in an optimal situation. We also go to another human being to share joy states.

And remember, I said that the mother is up relating enjoy states and down regulating negative states. So in a secure attach, you have somebody now who can do both in certain forms of insecure attachment that's not can happen. The avoiding attachment is always order regulating his states.

So uh just one unclear in avoidance attachment. The baby which is now let's take two and a half years old years .

already a toddle.

That's a toddler excuse me. Um the toddler is also regulating more often than seeking another to help uh do ordinated regulation .

i'm saying seure atch and and it's a little back of step on that the key to attachment a psychotic ological attunement you know with phrase notice psychotic ological attintion but the mother is regulating not only the psychological aspect, but literally is as regulating the physiological aspect of that which means that she's regulating the autonomic nervous system. Think about porgies social engagement system.

What we have here is the capacity by insecure attachment who have in the second part of the attachment is repair. Let me go back. Psychotic ological attune.

Sometimes he missed the tones, sometimes SHE misreads the baby states. One reason what happens in a good enough caregiving is that the mother who was mr. Tuned now returns that baby.

Now, we synching ized with that baby. Now reconnect right brains to right brains with that baby. And that repair is a key. Here you have missed tumen and repair. So the key to a secure attachment is not only psychotic ological tuman, but it's also also the repair of the mister tonne and IT that allows the baby now to expand that situation and being able to use that now to ordinate the case, that's a secure.

But if he missed the tunes, for example, and doesn't repair, let's say, or she's not that good at psychotic ological ally attuning, let's say, as an avoiding mother, because an avoid personalities are uncomfortable with real closely, another term for an avoiding personality is a depressive personality. What they are dismissing is the need for interactive regulation. So they're always order regulating. Or you have another time in which you have another form of attachment and insecure, anxious attachment, where that person is always interactively regulating, always, always going to others to help them regulate, but can also regulate.

I think this is a really important thing to hover on for a moment, just given some context about hundreds of thousands of questions that I get about avoiding versus secure versus anxious attached. And you stated IT all incredibly clearly, but I want to make sure that we double click on this, as they say, the idea that if a child and mother did not coordinate their authority synchro n chronide do not synorix their automatic regulation in the proper way, that there would be a non secure attachment. Amusing that language of for a specific reason um makes total sense.

But this idea that if the child, which soon the baby, which is a toddle at three or so, is avoided, then they're going to have to learn to auto regulate and they're going to seek others to help them regulate less. Then a secure attached and the anxious attached baby, toddler, adolescent, adult, will do just the opposite. They are going to have a hard time, self soothing.

But they are going to feel, let's say, these might be the kind of people that don't well tolerate a text message not getting responded to at a very short latently yet, for instance. And we all, and we all get a depending on context, we have this right. But I find this to be incredibly important, which is why I want to go back through IT, because I think nowaday, we hear so much about anxious and security attached, avoid the sector in the context of adult romantic relationships.

But I hope that people are realizing the truly incredible importance of your work, which is that the same circuitry and mechanisms that are used to establish infant mother attachment or repair posed later in life for adult relationships. I think that when we hear that and makes sense, but I don't think that most people know that they assume somehow that they're circuitry in our brain and body for adult romantic attachment that is distinct from our attachment circuit. True that we had with our parent, and I think your work speaks very loudly, that they are, in fact.

the exact same. All of this is happening in the right brain. All and incidently, attach relationship is retained as an autobiographical memory in the first two years of life even before there's a left hemisphere and that under later stress situation that will be the key there and suddenly ly, the attachment, whether is secure, insecure, is also the key to positive and negative transfer. Ces, that's what is communicated. Um let me go back and say a little bit more about one other form of attached and and that you mentioned the type, the attachment.

the the d babies yeah disorganized babies.

So you have secure, you have two types of organized in secures, okay, the avoid in the anxious and then you have a disorganized disordering. Now ultimately, that person under stress is not able to order, regulate or to interact, regulate. So what they will do at that point now, now i'm now thinking about, let's say, P D, S.

D. There is A H A bottle and personality disorder that personal literally can go to the other order or interact regulation. That person now will use A A defense literally to shut down the attachment system.

And that's exactly what the association is. Association just shuts down the attacker. So in the anx attachment, you have a continual activation of the attachment system, which means a continual activation of the right atmosphere all of the time.

And in the secure, uh, dismiss the attachment, you have a deactivation of the attachment system, which would be a deactivation of the right brain. So in the end, a secure attachment is an efficient one, but is an efficient one that can switch back and forth between them. Not only that IT, also at a later point, a time when the left comes online, you can also communicate much Better with the left atmosphere.

You know them without that. Regulation theory is essentially a theory of the development of the self in an abNormal situation, but also talks about the psychopathic genesis of the self, the early origins of psychiatric disorders and personality disorders. I'm thinking about not only schizophrenia and depression, but i'm now thinking about, uh, notice c personal resort is borderline personal resort is people come back to more on that, and then ultimately, the repair of the self.

So regulation theory is about the development of the self, the psychopathy is itself, and then the repair of itself, because these attachment situations are now going to play out under all periods of stress. The right hemisphere is dominant for the stress response, the right hemisphere is dominant for the sympathetic nervous system, the energy expanding, and the right hemisphere is dominant for the power. Sympathetic nervous system is.

So again, all of that will play out at a later points on the stress. And when those systems break down, that's when the patient will will or form symptoms, logic and common to therapy. And in therapy, the therapies. Now the key i'm jump ed in here.

No, this is great because there's .

a right brain to right brain interaction between the mother and the infant. It's also a right brain to right brain interaction between the third patient. And the key to to both of them is regulation.

Person is coming into this regulated state. The key to to that is regulation and the key to any form of therapy, whatever the form IT is again, is interactive regulation and its a theraputics relationship. The thing which is the best indicator of whether somebody will do well at of therapy and whether recognition will do well out of therapy is how well they can deal with the theraputics relationship.

And a really good therapies literally knows how to bring back those attachment things there because now the person is starting to feel safety interested and incidently touching is about safety and trust, which is very much autonomic. But again here um the key to uh the therapy is being able to form a therapy relationship with the patients. So the key here can the therapy form to create a therapist relationship with an avoiding patient, with secure patient, with anxious patient, with a bottle line patient.

As you can imagine, the tourist thing is going to be able to do with the border line patient or the schizophrenic patient. So what you have here is that the attachment dynamics are still at. So in the very first session, what's happening? The therapy is listening to the verbalizing of the patient in order to diagnose and understand the symptomatology, but the therapies is also listening beneath the words, and the patient is tracking the attachment relationship on the neath, tracking in the arse, and the arouse of this regulation underneath that, tracking IT in his own body, so to speak, at sea.

And again, that is a different type of listening. Again, the therapies is listening to a left brain, but more or less, the therapies is listening to the right brain. And the question is, how does the therapies do that? And in order to, just for the record, for the therapies to be able to get to the attach on dynamics, which are right later ized, the therapy has got a switch editor left into the right.

And there's a term for that turn for that is surrender. surrender. You cannot cautiously purposely put yourself into the right. You've gotten let go. You've got ta let go think let IT be on the space.

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Again, go to drink A G one dot com slash huberman to claim this special offer. Tell me more about a surrender. And I just want to make sure I understand this is surrender on the part of the therapy trying to yes, listen to the narrative that the patient is sharing, but also paying attention to the underlying emotional state.

Is the person quaking? Are they um angry? Is their feelings of despair， shock? Uh to discuss right so so they're Carrying this in in their parallel tracks. And then this is the goal of the therapist, if there are an effective one to then sue the patient or is IT to allow the patient to have some sort of catharsis, some release of this, like at what point does the intervene and trying coordinate and show the patient a different a different way to think about and feel about the topic market?

What i'm suggesting here is that essentially the therapies is listening left brain to left rain, but the therapies also is always listening beneath the words and said, and he's listening to the right brain, to right brain communications. And the patient now who is the press, is coming out with ripe communications. They are sadness.

And the voice, the face, is clearly this regulated. And essentially, as the therapy is tracking that the emotional around, whether it's into high bow rose when the or hyper arousal in o into anxiety, the first thing there is to secure ze with that patient so that my physiology is thinking with their physiology. And now through the right insula interaction, timely.

I now literally and feeling in my body what the patient is feeling in their body. I now understand their patient from the inside out. And incidently, what i'm picking up in my body about the this regulation of that, that patient may be very different than the variable report that, that patient is giving at that time.

But the key here, literally just like the mother is synchronising with that babies credos and the dead s of that automation ic state of those emotional state and picking up those points where they are shifting into and out of emotional state. I'm synchronising with that. And then ultimately when i'm in synched with that kind of thing, then at that point, purely implicity, i'm now starting to slow the tone of my voice.

If I want to reduce that arousal down or i'm up regulating the voice at that point of time, I have now interactively regulating, and we are now sequenced together. So essentially was gonna happen. Is that as we synchronize as they are going into this regulation, we're now synchronising together as we're going down into into regulation.

So the therapist can literally and thematically um show the patient what auto regulation is like or what coordinated regulation is like.

And you'll see IT on my face, face voice, just you'll sit on my face. You'll sit in the tone of my voice. You see IT in my gestures. Those three sensory modalities are now going back. And four, two tweezers.

So the key is the first session literally is not only to diagnose really, it's to start to begin to synergies with our patient and to form a third alliance with ata. And at the end of the first session, the patient may say, I don't know why, but i'm feeling Better and I have some idea that you can understand, but it's got to be more than that. What I am feeling literally .

so often nowadays, I think we hear that.

Adult romantic relationships can provide A A healing of some of the failures of childhood attachment um and there's also phrase thrown around a lot that we need to learn to parent ourselves um this is more of a pop psychology online social media thing you know that that people need to learn to mother and father themselves at some level to self to and to you know who knows what that means? I'm not going to trying to find IT, it's not Operational. Define this. So the question I have is um to what extent do you think the process that you just describe with a therapy can start to rewire some of the um the capacity to auto regulate or coordinated regulate essentially .

here um what you have is over time, partly because of this security. First let me let me let me spell synchro with the capital less. What I mean by that is, in the last five years, a huge amount of information has come out about this idea, about interpersonal synergy.

The terms second comes from the greek sink, meaning the same crony time, same time, so that literally two people literally are synching ized in the state. We are feeling something in the same moment, and we are feeling IT spontaneously between ourselves. We are feeling that kind of situation.

So again, here, the key to the mother really even more than the order regulation. The key is interactive regulation. Number one, number two is occurring at at an implicit level.

The mother literally is doing this without any conscious awareness. She's doing this intuitive. Ly, the right atmosphere is intuit and its mathematic. It's not rational, logical.

The key to any disorder, whatever is, is the regulation of a particular state, the regulation of rage, the regulation of loss, the regulation the this regulation of the shame I discuss. So especially what you have is um the regulation of all of these emotions. But that regulation, I want to point out, is all implicit.

And here's with the skill of being with patients of a long periods of time is the key here because the key to making changes in the patient is that what you say to the patient or what you do to the patient, it's how to be with the patient. You understand the difference how to be with that patient, especially while that person's being is in a deregulated state. Now by definition, when they're coming in, in the first session, they are on the this regulated stated.

So again, it's implicit is not explicitly. If explicit regulation is is an intellectual understanding of my symptoms, implicit is an unconscious understanding at a physiological level, at a psychotic ological level of that. And it's A, A is right on.

There is the mechanism on the neth empathy. Now we know empathy literally has to be there, but empathy is a right brain function. And there is a difference, I said, there is a difference in the hemispheres.

There is a difference between emotional empathy, where I am feeling what you are feeling, and we are sharing the same feeling. And I don't have to think about that literally. I know at that point in time, we are in the same place.

There's a difference between emotional empathy on the right and cognitive pathy on the left cog, that empathy is an understanding and makes no changes, because essentially what were attempting to do is make the changes in the right. Now the changes in the right are going to be in the right access. They're going to be the orbital frontal cortex, which is the executive regulator of the right brain.

Also, lateral cortex is the exec regulator of the left rain. The orbital final cortex now starts to form new connections with the single, the insular and the middle. And that's where you are now going to see the changes.

But again, the changes are due to the regulation. So you'll see the person now starting to comment to more regulated states. And the key is security.

So what's happening here, there's a strong theraputics lions, say, the interest. And in that situation now, the more synchro that is there between the two, the more interactive regulation there is between the two. And first they will be secretly between the patient and the therapy. Then they will be secretly interrex regulation between that person and maybe other people, maybe a wife, partner and ultimately in the symptomatology will change. Because remember, the symptomatology is this regulation and the the whole key is to change IT to regulation.

fascinating. There are couple questions I have before we move forward about mother infant attachment as opposed to father infant attachment. So that's one. And i'll ask these again in a moment, but think you will see where i'm going here. And then i'm fascinated by the idea that these circuits get established early in life, then are repurposed for adult relationships that can be modified in the way that you just described, but that they cross um gender and gender lines. So for instance, a female baby can form these patterns of attachment um with their mother, female caretaker.

But then assuming that baby grows up to be a head or sexual, 我们 and SHE has attachments to men， then these things can be reactivated across gender lines, right? So this formation of the circuitry is not gender specific. Although IT sounds like it's important that IT be the mother to child in some way, you keep saying mother child supposed to caretaker.

So to just spell them out one by one first question, are there any data about the formation of the the circuits in the baby where the mother is? They're not available if it's an adopted mother um if it's a child raised by extended family. I mean, there are so many different configurations but you get the point.

Here's what i'm suggesting. First of all, there has been some um conflict on this. But um after thirty years on this, um I I I believe that there is a primary attachment figure and the primary attachment figure is the person who is the interactive regulator of that baby, when that baby is on the .

stress between age zero into yes.

or let me say even another way, the primary attaching figure is the person who provides the right brain with that baby, when that baby's right brain is this regulate.

could be dead. Could be mom, could be.

Yes, it's true. Women are Better at reading membership cues than men are, but IT could be. And incidentally, we now have some evidence that showing that men do have right brinks.

For a second there. I wasn't sure if you were joking, but I don't know may be that's reflective .

of an nature right right now that be in the case. What's happening here is that in the first year to the mother's right brain, SHE is the person who is the right brain in which in most cultures is is woman, but doesn't have to be IT could be a safe home dead who literally has a good right brain.

And maybe a couple of figuring out that literally know he'd be Better in that position, but he needs that right, right? But other than that, what happens here when IT goes now into the second year or the end second year and the father comes online, got me at that point in time, the father now becomes a primary attachment figure also, but he has some differences. The way he's dealing with that baby, he's usually more arousing with that baby and that the play is more arousing with that baby.

So more um activation of the sympathetic autonomic yeah so so sort of more up let's call IT up up level play exactly .

you're dealing with more up regulation and being able to tolerate more hyper around states. Because in the second year, one of the things that the father will do with the infant is uh with tiller instance first year title, second year rough tumble pay, for example rough and tumble play. So the father is that so the father literally is now teaching the child literally how to take risks.

But the father is now moving more towards autonomy and the independence. The mother was there at the beginning about interactive regulation. So the father is playing that role.

And i've also suggested that just as the mother is shaping that baby's right brain in the first year, the father is now shaping that baby's left brain towards the end of the first year, second and into the third year, that he's shaping that babies, his left rain to that baby's left rain. That being the case, he may also, earlier around, have had good experiences with that baby early on in life. And a good example of that would be a father who is tender, tender, yet at the same time is instrumental and is teaching things about the world. So one brain shaped by the mother figure, the mother by the father figure.

What about under situations where there's really just one primary caretaker? This is increasingly common nowaday. And in some countries, like in certain skin avian countries, people up to do this. Uh, and elsewhere, of course, but this isn't always a divorce situation. Sometimes people decide up children on their own.

And I think what's happening in that kind of situation is the person is is initially performed, initially providing the right brain and then that person that is now providing the left break. So if let's say as as a single woman with a child, her right brain is there on on the get but then in the second year and this certainly there maybe father figures or family members are also can step into that but essentially her left brain is is there also um remember um we both have bright brains and left brain but again that's that's a different kinds of skill in a left brain which would be you know the the more autonomous situation what .

are your thoughts about some of the modern exploration of compounds that can facilitate more right brain synchro between therapist and patient? Um i've done a few episodes about md ma assisted psychotherapy. These of course were just recently are not approved by the fda.

So these are not illegal. Nonetheless, there are interesting in clinical studies showing that um these are in athens. Um one could imagine that they could be useful in the proper context to um improve patient uh therapy right brain synchro and accelerate some of this process. But IT seems like I would also require a both the patient and the therapies taking the compound and that seems like IT would have all sorts of ethical issues.

Remember, it's the relationship in the end that is the key there. Um I think I am also somewhat aware of that that literature and you use the word and paths a gin know which is not not quite IT straight out and perfect but mimic those different situations there um my thought is that um that might be more applications if IT were specifically involving right brain dynamics with a person who knew how to work with those right brain.

You you what you're getting there are very early forms of the behaviors which are subcritical. Remember the the attachment is also regulating the sub cortical areas, and those are the key ones. And intently we are in too much attention to the court. We literally have to shift because the sub cortical areas of the foundations of the human and everything is built on top. A data i'll come back to unusual when the second, if I don't get on that, in fact, that some people who have worked with me, i've also been using right brain type cythera y in that with those patients.

And I think that that will be um really interesting possibilities of saying changes where you have the relationship, you know, in addition in addition to that and also some understanding about how the right brain works because one of the problems that you have where there there is still some resistance. This the idea that the right brain is just a similar version of the complex left atmosphere but that's not the case. This right brain is working completely differently as so i'm thinking that um in that case, uh a Better situation before I forget this um I want to just a through one of the piece I said that the right brain is in a girl spirt from the last time master in the last five years, ten years there has been a real interest in in europe development and evidence to show that you're even seeing the latter ation in the feast.

And so and there's even evidence now scientific evidence to show that the early memories in utero are stored in the ride in middle la. So they're down there, so to speak IT. So we're not paying more and more attention to what is happening there because at birth, literally, what you have here is the deep reports of the right brain are evolving a new ero, the insular and in and the right mix, the center and middle, and that setting up. And you also have signal ization across the person, whereby they are regulating each other. Organic nervous systems.

Can a journal in pass across the present? I should know this. I know a drennen doesn't cross the blood brain berrier, but the brain makes its own a journey in. But do we know if a journal crosses the presentation?

Very most of the studies have on right and high levels of courses, are they going across IT. So if you have, let's say, the amiga la, which is is in a critical period growth riding middle and the quarter l levels are very high. That's really going to not be an optimal situation for that a migdal to evolve because you going to have a continue with stress response there that's going to have and essentially what that means also that if the mother isn't a very stress state during a neutral, some of that literally now is going to impact the lower areas of the brain. So um as as far as a general goes, i'm not sure that I don't see why not uh although uh hormones certainly cross you know we're looking at not only changes a neuromodulators, especially in certainly the key here that we're trying to regulate are the neuromodulators excuse me, toping reward nor a general, a gentle it's those which also early in life literally form plastic neuroplasticity. They will form circus that's all attempting to to regulate here to downregulates very high levels of north genuine and up regulate you know don't .

mean i'd like to take a quick break. Thank one of our sponsors function. I recently became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. While I ve long been to end of blood testing, I really want to find a more in deep program for analyzing blood.

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And I started to, I actually read this work when I was living into paying。 I would walk on the roof. I don't recommend this there. No side walks into paying. And I I would read that the physical copy, and I I recovery distinctly, think thinking about this image of the of the baby and the mother and the baby is a little bit no hyper rose is upset until the mother would make, you know, sort of sounds onest arly words like .

these kinds of things .

are humming or or, you know, mounting LOL vize these sorts of things and property that the process, and then the are the related release of things like sir tony and perhaps oxytocin as well.

We can talk more about those but then also how critical IT is uh, for the mother to be able to regulate the baby's transition to up states like looking at the baby as IT comes out of a nap and saying good you know, good morning and really wide eyes, a lots of gestures, lots of gesticulating that is. Bringing the voice level up and the baby go, you know, really waking up in IT in a kind of a steep slope of of arousal and how important that was. And then that being slightly more related.

And this makes perfect sense to or penetrant a drennan at low healthy levels and perhaps dopa as well. Is, is that the right way to think about this? And if so, is that what's going on when we form adult friendships? Adult relationships, are we isolating back and forth between the ability to hang out and relax and and sue each other and the ability to kind of get excited about something? Is this the basis of all relationships and related?

Yes, yes. The key here is emotional regulation again and again is implicit emotion regulation. Um one of the tenets central tenants of my ideas here is that, first of all, there has been too much of an emphasis on the dawn regulation and negative states.

Remember the original attachment theory, the secure base, the baby would come back, and in a stress stage he would doone regulate the the negative states. But really, attachment is about the downregulates of negative states and the up regulation of positive states. Still, at this point in time, the importance of positive states and the human experience are overlooked.

Positive emotions, joy, enthusiasm, excitement is positive states literally are the key, and there are home model aspects to that. As you just point out, for example, dovey. And this goes to therapy also in therapy is not only just a downed regulation and the sharing the downed regulation, but is also sharing the up regulation of positive states because that you know that that that's a critical piece of the also, but this still is that bias.

Look one way now in the right brain book i'm also talking about two types of of love, quiet love and excited love. This was the famous, uh, psychoanalyst Donald winning ut, who was a pity tricia, who was one of the great psychic analysts of the twenty century and he made the distinction of between quiet love, which would again be a downregulates of the gentle and excited, which is into a para sympathetic state. So you're going from a hyper sympathetic state into a paris sympathetic state.

Quiet love and then excited love, which would be also passionate love, which is the highest of state. So to speaker, and they are both important, and ultimately they both need to be integrated. And you may have a situation whereby one can do one, but ultimately they have to come together.

And let me make this important point. In the end, we have negative emotions for adoptive reasons. Is there a stay? shame? Shame is meant to those down very high levels of arise.

And if one can do that, very high levels of us, let's say a notice. c. Personality disorders need to be able to, so we need to have access to both positive and negative emotion. But the real key to a secure attachment is the capability to integrate both positive and negative emotions.

So with a really good city security attaching mother, when that baby is in a dance state, literally SHE can literally write down with that baby in synonyms and when it's an upstage and you can lead ride up with that state. In the case of autistic personal resorters, let's say, for example, i'm jumping here. We've got a in insecure attachment. IT can be an avoiding attachment, or the other one depends what kind. There are two different times in noisy stic personal order.

You can have anigh sly attached.

No, no. But you can have two different times in narcy stic personal resort, a vulnerable attachment and a statistic attachment.

You said, a vulnerable attachment.

Vulnerable attachment is get an anxious attachment.

These people constantly need praise.

yeah. Yes, thank for me. But but also eatin c attaching. But my my point out of that essentially here is the stresses in life are there, and then the negative stresses are there.

But we can learn from those negative stresses also, I said. And ultimately, we what we need to know is to be able to know how to integrate. If we can't integrate, the positive and the negative will end up with splinting. You know the .

term because I believe that's a primary a feature of borderline personality disorder, which I think we should also touch on. yes.

Yeah so my understanding about splitting is that it's the I love you, I hate you phenomenon brought on by um not just an internal switch um which is sometimes seen in like bipolar disorder but rather somebody with a bottle erline personality disorder will see something like um and be like very upset like suddenly like the fact that a glasses empty of a drink meant that they didn't think enough to to like rifle a glass as something we're as a few minutes before IT was perfectly fine. IT was IT was not an issue right? There seems to be a trigger and .

then they split. Is that right? yes. So essentially, you know splitting, usually the splitting goes out externally. Bad person is all bad. I am all good. So now you have that splitting is, and you can see anything of the goodness in that person at this .

point of time does IT sometimes go the other way.

That person is all good. You could that, but you also have internally split. You have an internal split between a good self and a bad self. And internally there's an internal object relation that we all have as we internalize. This is external relationships so that there is a good self and a bad self, literally, and that they cannot be integrated, so to speak.

And that that part of me, I hate that part of me versus I love that part of me all in two hundred times of border line. Usually what you see at the very beginning is that there is an over idealization of the positive values of that therapies. And then there is some, there are some then stresses and mister tones and ruptures that are repair. And now all of a sudden, what was totally good now becomes totally bad. Instead of that could be, if there is not a strong theraputics lines, the point of which the person will drop .

out are these are people with borderline personality is I don't if you still call IT the disorder nowadays he gets a little bit into the let's call that borderline um with border line um do they exit in the same sort of splitting um idealization and then the idea that somebody is terrible, they want nothing to do with them in the context of work, relationships, friendships as they extend out into other domain of life. Or is that unique to certain types of relationships? I think it's .

the way of seeing the world, you remember, and and the way of seeing the world essentially is very different from the left hemisphere in the right thing at the right way hemisphere, seize the world through emotional relationship and that ah so that can become a trade that can be really a hard and face trade. We put another way, in the case of north estis personal resort， the baby is all good.

The caregiver, primary caregiver, is always thinking very positive about that, about that infant. But when that infant now all of a sudden becomes depressed. The interactive regulation stops at that point in time.

The caregiver doesn't .

anything to do IT now. So at that point in time, now everything is on catches. If you and I together, and there is a missing une between us, what possibility, let's say, this smash ve attachment is, all of a sudden I will diener ge.

We got too close. And at that point in time, maybe i'm acting at my early attachment dynamics because what the baby is is doing is expecting what the mother will do next. And at that point in time is a mission man like that.

And so in the case of a dismissive personality, that person will emotionally disengage. Okay, become very abstract that point in time. At at that point in time, I can feel you, I hear what you're saying.

And so at all points time, you have the situation of coming closer and moving apart, coming closer and moving apart and this will be that out in the thread relationship also and um and so that every time the person is the anxious person is stressed that will command closer. You know now they're more demanding about what they need from you. Look at the tone of my voice, while the instigate void now is not gonna deactivate.

And at that point in time, my voice will not get flat. You can even hear the effective tone of my voice. So i'm telling you that we always pick up at the level of our own physiology how emotionally close or distant that person is at this point in time, especially at points of stress, whether i'm coming again or i'm moving out.

Let me go back to this. All of this is occurring at an impressive level, which is why you said something about your parenting at setter. Too much is on a conscious ous level there.

If you really want to make these changes in a personality, they have to be changes in the right brain. And that's why all therapy now is looking into a motion. All therapy, no matter what form of therapy, is lying on top of the therapy regulation, ship and emotion.

I am pausing them, just taken all this in and thinking about. What are the ways that people can start to tap into this right brain health, or lack of health, and ways to repair their right brain circuitry, so to speak? Without a therapy? Or is that just simply impossible?

And that is that possible and that is that possible? We we all do grow and instantly our right brains do grow. But again, um the key here i'm suggesting the whole idea about interpersonal neurobiology IT was the editor the notice interpersonal which is the two personal situation.

There has been too much of an emphasis on order regulation and not enough emphasis on an interactive regulation. The real key to changing a right brain. Is finding people you can be close with, finding people you can be open with, finding people you can be vulnerable with. That literally, you can show you are shortcomings and opening yourself up to those people as they open up to you. It's literally to form that right brain to right brain communication system with someone else.

I think I just got IT. I think if i'm not mistaken, what you're describing is interactive dynamics that create or elaborate on circuitry that exists in all of us, but that for some people might be atrophy because of the lack of proper nourishment, emotional nourishment, early in life, but that we can engage. These are these circuits, these right brain circuits.

But then when we're not around these people, there must be something about the right brain circuitry that provides a sort of a suthing function so that we we must know that in an implicit level that like we can do this, like we know how to attach and healthy ways to people. We have a close friend we can rely on. We have maybe friends, plural, we we uh may be prepared a relationship with a sibling this kind of thing. So it's not that these circuits need to constantly be engaged every moment with the with the barry sta with, but that that we somehow an unconscious level IT must be that we come to realize that that this circuitry has has reelly orated, or is elaborated a way that that we know calling what .

we can do IT. You know, remember, part of the problem is being able to take in, to take these things in here. But the key to emotion, the incident limit, let me throw out important, another important term in terms of the therapy situation.

Now I ve said essentially therapy is is about literally reworking emotion. And the most the key to to mental health, IT and physical health is also a right brain, uh, a right brain emotional situation here. The key here is that there are heightened effective moments in a therapy session.

I want to go third py, that i'm going to come back to your question. We've now formed the therapy al lines. The stronger the therapy allies between us, more empathy between us, so to speak, the more we can share. I'm now going to start to drop some of my defenses because the defenses there a block effect, negative effect, and begin now to take a chance now to over myself, up to somebody else is.

But in a therapy sessions somewhere around the middle of that session, the person comes in out of the world in a left brain state, somewhere in the middle, the session, they started moving into affect, and now the person is starting to talk in a more effective level. And now talking about a memory or sn sad situation or something that just happened in a relationship with a couple. Now you you even started hearing my voice, is now the voice tones change.

And these moments, which only may last, believe in in at fifty sixty seconds, are heighten effective moments. These are moments when all of a sudden we are both in the right and we are both synchronised. And the effective now is is out there sort of speak.

And that's the possibility now to get this change in these high affected moment. So to be in an interpersonal relationship with someone, and the could create with that person a highest cof moment in both this which we are sharing at that point in time by taking the risk to be open at that point time. I'm also, these are the moments in life that you really go into your autobiographical memory.

I remember my occasion with that person. I can bring back the whole context because remember, the right brain acts with images, images. So I can bring back that image now.

And I can remember the closest that I felt at that point in time and set them. These are putting into bright brain. So we we are always putting into our order backer memory, these hiding affected mums.

So to have those shared effect moments with other people, these are really wear by your making changes in the right. And these are much more important, I want to suggest, than you intellectual. Now, there have been certain, F, M, I am going, i'm onna.

Move to A, A little bit of a different place here. What I am suggesting is that these right brain, right in communications are always going on, but certain people literally can read them as well as other people can. And they can't read the face of voice and they can think now as well.

Can I stop and ask one question, which is, let's say that let's take this conversation for instance. I'm listening to your words very carefully. If I make an effort to listen especially carefully to what somebody is saying, the content of their words, is there a competition between left and right brain such that i'm now not getting as much right brain listening? Yes, okay.

This to me feels like the the surrender aspect, whether I can. And I do this during these interviews, a slash discussions where i'll sit back sometimes and i'm still listening, but I widen my gaze. I don't look around, but I widen my gaze, and i'm trying to just feel something coming in.

I'm not a therapy. Obviously, no one would ever suspect that I was, but I only do IT for a few seconds. And then I reengaged.

And I used to think that I was like like a relaxation of sorts. But inevitably, I feel like it's a different way to the conversation, takes a different direction. Is is that more or less what you're talking?

That's a loss shift and and copies. So you can shift from the left into the right about a hundred hundred million seconds. So essentially, you can't be you have to be in one.

So if i'm listening very carefully to like exactly what you said and and i'm tracking everything you said, like i'm in a like we're in a courtroom situation and then my right brain is suppressed. Okay.

is that right? Good feet. Good feet. Now, what where I go here? Okay, the right hemisphere is dominant for attention.

OK. I mean, this baby in this mother, literally, she's focusing attention on that baby's face on with. But there are two different types of attention. Strong resides to show this. The left brain Operates by narrow attention, narrowly focus attention. As the best example of narrowly y focus attention is you are following my words one after the other is, but there is another type of attention, which is suits by the right brain, which is called wide ranging attention, which comes right out of fluid, which you also call, maybe you'll remember, this is suspended attention.

I heard that beautiful.

It's the same thing which is much wider than that. And that form of attention is the form of attention that the right brain has because the attention at that point in time is. Not only of what's coming from the outside, but also attention to what's happening in the inside, my own inside, the changes in my own physiology at that point in time also. So yes, there are these two form, different forms of attention. And essentially the only way someone who was just narrow all the time, let let's take a personality who just live, is in the left hemisphere.

a hyperlink person.

exactly hyper logical hyperrational cannot really see the big picture, but literally that kind of a situation. So essentially that kind of a person is always looking at the narrow aspect bit and cannot see the broader context, the broader context because there's a context that's being set up right now between you and I. There's also a context that's being set up.

And that context also has to a kind of a feeling of safety and trust as we literally just go off wherever are you know, our thoughts are with some idea that literally you'll be able to follow, that you'll come back with me at the same time. So the context, the emotional atmosphere between us changes when you go left into the right. Like that point here is that I used to be thought that you, the only way you could understand the brain was by looking more inta cycling into one brain, if you understood how one brain worked, and everything was in ta psychic.

But then there is the interpersonal part of IT. And so essentially what we are moving now, from a one person into psychic psychology to a two person into personal psychology, you see what I mean by two persons. I've got the mother here, got the baby there.

I get the patient here. I get the third of the stair and between them, literally going back and fourth at all periods of time. Right brain to right brain communications underneath the conversation. So no imaging, hyper scanning. No imaging, your familiar hyper scanning. Another paratime shifting thing that is occurring now in our imaging for the first time, we can now scan two people and I R S E G would ever want, while they are in the middle of a basic interpersonal interaction, a numerable interaction between the two of them.

These studies have now been done, and what they did was that they found is that the two brains, especially when they are into emotional states and when they are looking at each other face to face, and they're concentrating literally on how to one pathetic be without person, is that emotions are to think. They find that the the right brain of one will sngi ze with the right brain of the, and the part of the right brain that synchronised with the other is the right temple of paradise junction. A lot of evidence.

Now, on the right temporal brial junction, I said, right brain to right brain, so that up now, the eyes are coming. I remember the eyes. I mean, direct eye connection really is the most powerful form of communication.

I always remind people these are two little bits of brain outside your crane. I evolved as, where does that might seem? There are two bits of brain.

Your retina is central nervous system. And you're looking at, that's about us. Closer, you can get to looking at somebody's brain state as anything.

The eyes are being controlled at the automatic noval system. So you got the you have an ornament nervous system, nervous system security here, so to speak um but essentially, uh, what's Carrying at this point of time, face, voice, gesture. The face is process in the post story apart of the right atmosphere, that face processing right atmosphere, face processing the right, the posture apart of the right atmosphere, the sensory areas of the right atmosphere process the voice, the memory of the voice, the tones of the voice, and different than the semantics of the voice.

And this Price, this is what the italians do so well.

The in the police theory, apart of the right hemisphere, also will process, gesture and tack. Okay, all of that comes together, is integrated together, and the right temporal rial junction. So when two people literally are empathetic synchronizing with each other, when we are sharing the same emotional state.

The very patient says at this point time, my god, it's rage. I never realized IT was anger. And at that point in time, the empathic thorius who syncing.

We are both literally now in the right temporal parao junction. But the right tempo prio junction is what sense the communications and receives the communications got me here. So essentially, that's where our linkages, and we are now literally in a right brain to right brain communication.

And what they found was during a real psychotherapy situation where the patient comes in and they're there because they have interpersonal relationships, problems and emotional problems, and they're face to face in their eto why, and they're tracking each others like that. You will find that synonomous ation. So the same ization between my right temp of road and your right temp of orio is a right brain to right brain communication.

That right brain to right brain communication is always occurring in that kind of a context. And therefore, the most important new change in the psychoanalysis is that the unconscious just is more than just happening at dreams. It's happening at all points.

Because the unconscious we now know is a relational unconscious, a communicate with another relation on couch, right? Brain to my brain. And this has really changed so much now.

And our understanding about what psychotherapy is, is about also in, and certainly I want to point out the major change mechanism and psycho therapy. Now it's not insight. It's not collide insight.

It's more the ability to have an emotionally laden conversation with another human being and to make emotional connections with another human being, which is why the therapeutic relationship really is the factor, the change. And that's very different than the old days was your unconsciously here, their analysis there. I'm not going to interpret what you're doing as you are sinking down into the right and i'm but i'm going to stay up left and interpret IT.

That's why there was a real limitation to that and that's why psycho analysis really changed. Now also to a face to face contact, not just the the court. Also fascinating .

and makes total sense based on the newer imaging tools, revealing synchro at sea have two questions they can be asked in parallel, music and dogs. Why music and dogs? Well, some of what you're describing reminds me of the state shift that occurs when I hear particular pieces of music for which i'm not paying attention to the lyrics or in some cases, the lyrics matter.

I'm listening, but they don't make any sense like if they were read out as a paragraph IT would make any sense. But IT feels like they're some fundamental truth there. So this is I could state specific musical preferences but is highly individual for some people to classical music.

For other people, it's music that contain lyrics. But there's this feeling like, yes, like there's a truth there. And I feel that truth even though the content to the words they can help myself like a bob dalen song, for instance, he's certainly could be considered a power, right? You know? And if you read the lyrics just as a paragraph h you like, this is nonsense.

But the way that is song, the meaning behind at the timber, in the voice, the process had set up and prisoners ly, the emotion that he was feeling at the time when the music was recorded communicates with us, and we enter A A synchronous state. And then in parallel to this, I mentioned dogs where, sure, they have a, they have a left brain in the right brain. But I think with animals generally, if they're domestic animals and we have a very close relationship to them, we we can really feel a resonance with them and presumed ly them with us. And um for anyone that's experiences that you some people might be truckling now, but it's nothing short of profound, right? The extent to which we really feel like they see us and we see them and there's a bond clearly not the same magnet de as a parent child bond, but nonetheless so music and dogs, do you think it's tapping in to this same right temporal parodi?

Well, I think that it's it's first, all the right temporal paradol junction is the post theory in the right overall front cortex. So the whole right brain there.

so as and so we're going we're basically going from interior to post here, just their structures the whole way yeah.

The orbital frontal is the regulation part of IT. The the the temporary rial junction is the communication point. So the whole key is the communication of emotion and the regulation of emotion.

Where's the surrender switch?

The surrender is the colossal switch out of the left into the right.

So, not so much paying attention to the content of the words, the logic behind them, the logical flaws that might exist, the analytic part, but rather how the words sound, how the words feel.

literally. yes. And clearly, one of the first world there has been a lot of a neuroscience done on music.

And I suddenly, ly, most of that is right brain showing, right brain activation in music. The key here, even more than that, it's it's particular music to me. IT has particular meeting to me. Subjectivity and a lot shows that music is essentially a mechanism of affect regulation. But I want to suggest to you that pets are also a mechanism of affect regulation.

Dogs everywhere I know.

And but maybe by the same thing, I want to suggest, I think, that the communication between dogs, and i've had four dogs myself, is that literally, it's tactile, it's the touch of that animal, it's the positive of the voice, because literally that dog understands the process of the voice. And also a some extent I think they they can read our our faces.

But more than that, there is one other sense which I haven't brought up, which is part of human relationship. And that's mill. okay? And this is overlooked in human relationship, but in real intimate context between human beings.

The smell is really a key here. You know, think about sexual arouse. So dogs are really very strong on our smell at sea.

But if attachment is reunion after the separation, you come home, there's that dog sitting there, literally, and immediately you're down, regulating the day you have now taken off the whole left, my sphere, our whole stress is all of that. And you now shifting left into right. And we use the mechanisms that are are available to do that.

And music is one of the ways to do that. So in some sense, music is in order regulation, although music can be live music. And then it's more that so that's the case.

Or playing music with others, this is something i'm incapable of because I have no musical ability. But playing music with others. You can see that when we talk about the chemistry of a band is so incredible to witness that and then to fit in mass with thousands maybe of other people.

Yes, there have been studies to show that during a performance um there is a synchro. There are synchronized states between the performer and and the audience. And I certainly they're all you can have thousands of people literally in that same synchrony state at that point in time.

Here you mentioned earlier Stephen porges work, and we know that brain and body are connected in both directions. And I should know this, but I don't know if the right brain has preferential um communication with the parasympathetic or sympathetic or other aspects of well, vagus is para yaz tic, but I think it's probably both.

I think it's the more we discover about about the vegas is likely to be mixed sympathetic parasympathetic, but i'll catch some heat for that that okay. But is the you know bodily sensing is a real thing like there are ways that are die frame and and our our core relax when we're happy. I mean, all of this is is obvious to anyone, but i'm just curious um how right brain uh links up with bodily .

stay right brain is more connected into the body than the left brain instantly. I do you know the name in the guiltless.

Yes, I know the name. And many people have commented on our youtube channel that I need to talk to in.

That's all that I have gotten that far.

But i've i've been busy.

Get him, get him.

Will will send you an invite.

Yeah I mean. There there has been ongoing dialogue between us for some time, but ian talks about that the right brain literally is much more connected into the body, and incidentally is also more is more dominant for will. Unconscious will is more important than conscious will, which you kind of at the very beginning we were talking about the life versus the right.

yeah. So i'm curious as to you know how people can start to since these right brain, left brain shifts. We talked about how paying a little less attention to the content of words and a little bit more to how a conversation is feeling independent of the word content, might be part of IT.

We hear a lot these days about how body posture matters. You know, like if people are closed up with their arms cross, I don't know, but sometimes i'm just a little chilly all across my arms and sometimes I cross my arms and lin, and I know that i'm in a much more state. So I don't put too much weight on that be. I should put more weight on that.

What what do you thought? Yeah this classical work on by the me analyst, by the name of manual hammer, and he was talking about how to reach the effect. And what he suggested is that there are certain moments in the session when literally my body, in order to pick up the communications of the patient, I lean back, i'm not leaning forward into, I lean back and let the atmosphere literally come over me.

So as I love this and i'm just forgive me for interrupting, but I love this because people, especially on social media, they they take a piece of information like, you know, if you're leaned back, your disengage, you're leaned forward, your engaged. But you could also just turn IT right around and say if you're leaning forward, you're in pending and person doesn't have space. And so IT becomes a Frankly.

becomes a bunch of P. S. But but notice what i'm talking about, what would the therapies attempting to do is to make an emotional connection and empathic connection, that and in order to make an apathetic connection, you're leaning back, you're leaning back.

And literally, as you leaning back, all of a sudden you're able to pick up things and hear things that you didn't see, see before, so to speak, and frequently what happens when when you're emotional connection like that, images will come to your mind, images which which really represent the emotional experience that the other is happening. And at that point in time, also what you find is that just as you're picking up that person's image, he's picking up your person image. And what hammer says is that we what we have here is something that's like an effective wireless between the two because it's going back and fourth between the two of us.

Just like a right brain to right brain, communication affected by fluid said, the human unconscious acts like a receptor. And he picks up the communications of the unconscious of another human deal fraud said, literally, human beings can pick up the unconscious without without IT going through the conscious mind. So again, in that kind of a context, you know that all that, all that makes sense.

The other thing I want to say about all of these behaviors that are going on now, when there is an emotional communication, the key is spontaneous behavior, spontaneous not thought out behaviors, spontaneous behaviors. When their spontaneous behaviors, there's more trust than than being, but not in the first place, but there's not a mind that is attempting to present anything. And when you have two people revealing their spontaneous behaviors to each other, even if they're not sure how they are going to be affected, that also is a matter of synchrony in order.

If for there to be synchrony, there has to be spontaneous two way communications, turn taking communications. And incidently, as we talk about this conversation, what is set up at the attachment between the mother and the infant? Anyone makes a cry.

The mother response is that they are now taking turns. There's turn taking behavior. And in a good relationship, what you find is more less smooth turn taking behaviors. And incidently, you and I, who have never met before, are not doing too badly in these spontaneous turn taking behaviors between us. I appreciate .

you saying that I feel the same way. Text messaging IT has become a dominant mode of of communication. These days. I've posted a few gas expert in emotions in the brain, this a felman barrett, for instance, and and others, and he and others have talked about how the a modification of emotions, you know, just like a smiley face or crying face or goodness, are in your mind blown. These things are convenient, as is short hand text, lack of puntuated IT set up.

But today's conversation also highlights the extent to which text messaging is much devoid of most everything that you're talking about, a Green bubble or a blue bubble. Seen or not seeing, you know read or not that read are depending on how you you your settings um the latency, the turn taking IT. Sometimes people layer in multiple conversations. You're going back and forth about a couple of different things and then then .

like your food .

water comes I mean sure that human brain can handle this but this .

seems either not good .

neutral that is or bad for um building in reinforcing communication. IT actually concerns me but of course i'm now forty nine so I can say things like now and i'm forty nine, I can say things like that you know but IT concerns me because I think that you can imagine the Young brain and older brain essentially not being good at interpersonal dynamics because of text message. I agree .

agree um first of all um. Let me mention that one of the inns ideas is that essentially um the left hemisphere is becoming more and more dominant today in in in not only in this country and that he sees that as really as a huge problem because the title this book is the master and cemetary and the emissary which is left brain, betrays the matter so he sees that one of the problems we're dealing with right now is that there's left atmosphere is there and that these right atmosphere is even metaphors are.

you know, a problem. I have a rule. I don't argue over text. I don't I don't like to argue over text. I don't like to argue, period. But I don't, you know, pick up the phone and of the generation where we called one another, I I find text to be completely devoid of what i'm really seeking in terms of connection. Um and I think that there's an entire I know there's an entire generation of people that grow up communicating mainly through short message.

JoNathan hate in the author of the anxious generation has has been encouraging Young kids to put away their phones and get out and interact more, encouraging parents to let their kids be more what they call free range kids and do this kind of thing, arguing that there's far fewer dangers in the physical world, and there are in the online world for Young brains. He makes a convincing argument for those of us that or um seeking to have Better connection um may be even do some healing of the right brain circuit tory that you talking about today. Do you think that um there is a higher key of effectiveness such that you don't like text would be perhaps at the bottom of voice memo maybe next level up?

I'm thinking here, a phone call know there was a time when we wrote handwritten letters and those felt very meaningful 是 i kept handwritten letters from people that I cared about and cared about me。 The handwritten letters of proves that IT doesn't have to be a real time exchange. But there's something about handwriting type britain letter would, by today's standards, would also be a significant thing.

But you know.

there really seems to be something special about a letter, a face to face conversation .

in in terms of literally the point of the letter and the attempts if the letter literally was to to make a connection. I can remember in my child is going away to camp er and we would write letters back and fourth and the words that were being used there were literally about making a connection and filling you in which also me that I had to reflect about myself and what was happening with me and how I felt about that and how and I was sharing all of that you know about the person that has really gone into the into into the background and things have become much more in personal. But I want to point out that for a certain type of personality, taxing fits perfectly.

These are people that walk round with left brains .

that are high portrayed um people you know living living in the left, living in the left. That's right. It's before I just want to point out there are other ways literally of feeding the right brain of what IT needs.

And one of the other ways also is going out into the world is travelling is being in nature without sharing those kinds of things. Also those are also in addition to the to the in person situation here. But um yet we're seeing changes here.

We're seeing changes here. And i'm not so sure too many of these are are good. Let me throw up um I made a little list of the areas which are now being studied which are showing that clearly this is right brain dominance in these activities.

Please sure stop .

at any point. Essentially, the argument that are making in the in this new book on human nature is that the highest levels of human nature, or on the right brain. So essentially intuition.

Now remember, intuition is there for all kinds of professions, that one of the things that are a fireman in gains over time is literally how to read the fire. So intuition purely right? brain.

And today, and intuition literally is, is drawing on body sensations also, IT said image. Creativity lot of evidence shows creativity, the ability to processing something novel and something new, metaphors. imagination.

Studies humor. music. poetry. art. 我。 compassion. spirituality. And the best for last love.

That's a spectacular list, making the the right brain circuit tory at at least among the most exciting circuits, certainly important circuits.

I thread for .

the next book I love right brain psychotherapy. Love, love, love that I want a hard cover copy I wanted for a couple years now. Um highly recommend that we will put links to your your .

books in the show on the development of sr.

okay. Will do. What are some activities that allow us to coin drop into our right brain circuitry a bit more, one that immediately left to mind, as you mention, nature and interacting with nature. And we were talking about music is walking. And earlier we talked about you educated us on rather the notion of wide range attention, this evenly suspended attention, that is, asia with the right brain.

This kind of widening of gaze is supposed to narrow gaze and narrow attention that is associated with left brain circuitry when we're out in nature and when we're ambulating, when we're walking, provided we're not looking at our phone one hopes, or looking for something specific like a bird that we've spotted, we tend to be in panoramic c vision. I'm a vision scientist, so I can help myself. You know what we call magna solar vision, he said like big pixel yeah taking IT all in it's more spiracle then kind of a core of attention. I would imagine that might be more right. Brain associated um what are some things that you if you suggest to your patients, like pay you know until our own next session, do encourage them to journal free associate journal to listen to music to to take walks what or do you you restrict the the activation this right brain circuitry to the session and then let IT just show up as IT were yeah yeah so so you let IT them sort of just .

default to what's happening yeah two two, two points here. First of all, on on a therapy. Um I think there has been too much of an emphasis on technique and therapy. And really what the viBrant researchers is showing IT is that um um is is the right brain process that the key here more than the technique.

And so um that be in the case due to my own training each cycle serbia shown to be more effective in making long term changes, uh and even changes after the treatment is over. Then other forms of therapy like C, B, T. So I think there's been too much on that on the matter. Further experiences the way rain is also dominant for processing novel information. Anytime something new comes up, the right picks IT up first, and you get a burst of north drennan out of that also.

So the pursuit of continuing to have a curious mind and an open mind, um I think is part of that and seeking new experiences in different parts of the world if I mean, there's an economic piece of that also, but with new chAllenges bring up new chAllenges that we have and to essentially, if possible, fee curiosity, curiosity einstein even said something essentially that along those lines there. So new experiences with new people, new chAllenges IT new places to see new, you know, a travel I think is a you know one of those. And IT turned out to be one of the great fortune gifts that came from all of this.

Um you know, I I was a therapies only for about forty five years, and I came into this late. I wrote this book in late. And literally it's LED mean to new relationships and new friends who starts making friends at forty, fifty years old.

But again, novell ties and sharing that, you know, I think is is, is also another way of doing that. Plus you you said, this are repeated exercise. Exercise is the key here.

Um I happened to be interested in energy and in my country and um um there's a um scientist navio and Sandy ago who was written on this and he's talking about the healing process and part of the healing process literally is exercise is fundamental to healing of whatever physical and mental and also restarted sleep. So taking care of our body. And one of the things that we learn early in our experiences mostly taught through the bodies, literally how to take care of our bodies.

And as you're all aware of, you don't see that in certain mythologies and you also have certain I am talking about more than yourself destructive like cutting, but ultimately the the ability to be able to to look inward. And to be able to reflect back upon the self and to be able to see um even what we want to see, you don't want to see. I I I I wanted to make a quick reference to the differences because um defenses are can be adaptive in my adaptive and they're important and they are there.

For example, we have defenses against overwhelming affect. The social is defense against overall overwhelming affect. But we also have defensive like oppression, which is part of all human beings.

And repression can be Normal and adaptive that can be maladaptive. And it's smelt adaptive, literally. When is when is when the repression is very strong. Essentially what you have there is that left atmosphere is just shutting out anything coming over from the right. That's what repression the left demonstrates, just shutting that all out. So part of this is becoming more aware of those defenses that we have also, and I want to make this point awesome, there are certain parts of ourselves which we cannot see. We can only see them when we're getting feedback from somebody who knows this and can see those things in us.

And even if at the time they're uncomfortable, but we need that feedback from somebody we trust to be able to see, which is why this ability literally to completely change one psychology is highly problematic because remember what you are attempting to do to change the right brain, which is why intimate relationships, close relationships um with whom we can share things is really a key there also we are everybody has blind spots and um the way out of that again is is is trusting enough to take in uh negative feedback. And you know at times also my own feeling is that when something hits me, let's say a disappoint and hits me. And one of the things I learned early about my own emotion, because in order to study emotion, you have to study your own emotion and server, that for me, literally when something comes, I just let IT come and move, whatever verage gonna go there and feel IT just at and all of its intensity and strength.

And even after sharing IT, literally letting IT penetrate down certified. And ultimately, at some point, it'll come back into another shape in a form. But our emotions are adapted.

And again, I want to point out one of the major families is that negative emotions are bad and positive emotions are good. Positive emotions are good. Manic emotions are negative emotions are bad loss. You know, we are wired for all of these emotions because they have adapted that. And we need to be able to be familiar with all of those different types of emotions, you know, that that come away in our lives.

I have a friend, he's a song writer and he told me that he has this process whereby he writes music every day um but he starts his day by painting or drawing I think he's sold some paintings and drawings but that's not not his main vocation but he told me that he he draws in paints as a way to sort of um greece the gears to song writing and then I learned that Jenny mitchill to this two or something similar and I can't help but wonder whether or not they've uh unconsciously tapped into a mode of bringing right brain circuitry up in terms of its activity. Um neither of them are known as painters or artists um but of course musical artists and quite accomplished one at that that tool ler technique make sense yeah that does essentially .

its its creativity which again is the ability to see something novel in in a new way to look at the same thing but through new eyes so I I think those are ways of literally artists know literally how to look, get surrender out of the left and get into the writing. You're seeing these mechanisms surrendered but only share and something else more to biographical about what you're saying.

Um when I decided to, I knew that I was gone to write something, you know, at a certain point in time. And so for ten years I went into a period itself study, and literally, I went to a library, outstate library, near me. And I just went through the stacks to remember what was like to go through the stacks.

And I started to move into psychology, into neology, into chemistry. But then I found myself doing something else. I went back to the piano.

I took piano, was as know as a teenager LED nowhere. But as an adult, I went back to the piano. We have a piano in the house.

Was came from my, my in laws, because I wanted to know something in my fingers. I didn't want to know something in my logic. I knew that the way that I usually would understand things would be rationally and logically.

But I wanted to be able to play and be able to play again. Purely with that, I was in nine fingers, and I also wanted to be able to visualize. So I got to a point now, or I started to be able to know, to be able to see so and I could visualize my dc real. Moving now up into the dendrites is at the sell memory. So that visualization capacity as well as the musical capacity was my intuit way of starting now more and more to get me to lean into the right, to be able to learn how to be in the right.

amazing. And I love this and and i'll refrain from sharing my personal use of such a sort. I guess we call them avenues into the right. But I want to make clear, I understand you're in the stacks of books in the library that feels and sounds like a like a cognitive endeavor, left brain endeavor.

But then I just came to you, I want to play the piano or um through the the research uh that you were doing this a ten year self research. Amazing by the way. I'm like so struck by that then did I just come to you in a flash like I want to play the piano again and I was IT, because playing the piano contracted so much with looking through the stacks.

or they were along. We made those for me, that was exploration. IT was exploration. That was all new information.

And I found that I could master more than what the field that I was trained. And let me give you one other experience, that is lot of evidence to show. The ara experience is right, brain also.

So there are times when literally insights will come quickly and suddenly, and i'll seem to come out of nowhere, and all of certain amuse is there. So that was an ohio experienced when I thought about that, just made all kinds of sense. I mean, there was a purpose tool because again, I want I needed to get passed um doing that. Let me tell you something else that I decided to do very early on as I was setting off into this year, year period. I decided never to memorize anything.

Tell me more.

It's a lot of effort that gets nowhere, literally what I wanted to do as I wanted to understand IT in the way that I could understand IT. So if there's a lot of wasted time in memorization is an happy in the case. As you can imagine, I have a rather enormous memory.

I know where things, I know where they are. I had to get them. I know what's important, and I know how to put the place where I can get.

I know where that article is. Incidently, when i'm working initiative, I would write everything down and the writing had fact, putting that more into my memory. Even now, when i'm studying, i'll take papers, i'll zero ox them and i'll read them at my desk. I will not read and study right off the computer, otherwise I was learning my own technique of learning .

so important. I often get asked, you know, what's your note taking process? How do you prepare a solo up? I do these long solos that only few pages of notes I could described IT but the process is so specific to the way that I learned across the whatever six, eight, ten weeks that IT takes me to prepare for one of those sometimes more that um IT wouldn't really translate like IT doesn't matter no .

yeah but there but there's a process of interest on there about literally how do I learn and you know, how can I how can I literally absorb the information so that IT goes indeed. But the left hemisphere essentially is a surface hemisphere. The right hemisphere is the one of so to be. And what goes into the right, for example, if you have an experience and emotional experience that's really important, that goes deep into your order biographic memorial, that's much deeper than you attempting to to memorize something you know at that point, at any point of time.

given the extreme importance of this right brain circuitry and of this automatic synchro between mother and typically mother primary caretaker that is an infant. What are some things that are known from the literature is critically important about that stage in terms of um you know amount of time spent with the child um you know often times parents are working, there are none, are any number of different things, there are lot of different structures nowadays for families and balancing work and family. Does there anything known about how to hate to use the word optimize but maximize the health of the relationship?

I don't think that this culture compared to other cultures really provides for that kind of time. I think that people are stressed um because of that. And now I want to talk about a maternal leave and maternal leave in other rich countries. Um um the maternal leave is three months and maternal leave six months or more scan the avia.

So these other countries have figured out this time of life is critical, that if you really want to affect a personality and help shape that personality to be a moral person or you know to have values is, at the time, literally, that to put in is the earliest years. That's when it's there, so to speak. And without that kind of leave policy in this country, most people go back to work at six weeks.

Six weeks is at the beginning of the critical period of the right brain. The autonomic nervous system is in a critical period. At six to eight weeks, the ami della is coming into a critical period.

The basis of lateral ammidon of the insula and the singular are in a critical period of that point in time. This is before the child is form an attachment and as our separation. And so I see this as literally and as i'm well aware of, there is now talking about this more and more.

In fact, the recent debate there was discussion of this uh also about this this problem, the london school of economics had A A study about what is the best predict of the best childhood predictor of adult satisfaction life. And the best predictor was a motion. And the second was the child's conduct, and the third and last was the child's I, Q.

We have things upside down here. We are focusing too much on executive functions that come online in the third year. And again, when i'm suggesting to you is that the whole foundations of our personality are starting in euro through the second in the third year.

And then you know what the father is said, that's where we literally should be putting the money, and the money should be there so that IT provides the time. Every other culture has figured the same. The unit f took a pole in two thousand and and twenty one of thirty six countries, rich countries. We came in last in emotional well din, childhood, well being shame .

IT is a shame. What's wonderful, however, that you're highlighting these issues. So many people are hearing about this.

And I encourage anyone, everyone listening to really take in the ordering of importance of of what doctor shore just shared that I Q third on the list, emotion regulation. Number one, conduct, conduct. yeah.

So the the idea that we need to train our kids up as little memorizing computers. Um is the clearly the wrong idea. Clearly, there's important information that needs to be committed to memory to be a functional human being, but that we're missing not just critical knowledge transfer but critical emotional transfer.

Yeah and for that reason and for so many other reasons, I really want to thank you for coming in today and having this conversation. It's unlike any conversation i've had on this podcast IT, for several reasons, not the least of which is that you have this incredible knowledge of the news biology, which for me is a delight and i'm sure for the listeners to, but also the clinical experience, which is so rich. And it's clear you've also done your own work and expLoring these ideas and and you've been here for and participated in the evolution of this whole right brain, left brain thing in the advent of neural imaging, and how that's really shed new light.

And I just love, love, love the way that you you break all this together in in terms of action, things with patient and therapies, but also just in terms of one's understanding of self. I am certain people going na take this knowledge into their lives and into the world. And it's been really enrich ing for me and i'm certain it's going to be immensely enriching for them.

So thank you for the work you do. Thank you for taking the time to come here today, and i'm excited about your new book. So keep us informed as to when that comes out.

Will have you back on for another discussion if you're willing. And just to thank you so much for entering this this left brain, right brain dancing dynamic. It's been thoroughly .

enjoy absolutely pleasure for me to an absolute pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with doctor Allan and shore to learn more about his work.

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And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocols book dot com. There you can find links to various vendors.

You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called protocols and Operating manual for the human body. If you're not already following me on social media, I am huberman lab on all social media platforms, so that instagram x formally known as twitter, linton, facebook and threads.

And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science space tools, some of which over lap with the content to the huberman lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content covered on the huberman in lab podcast. Again, it's huberman lab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't always subscribe to our neural network news letter, the neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as brief one to three page PDF that covered protocols for things like deliberate heat exposure, deliberate cold exposure.

There's a protocol for managing your depine. There's a protocol for optimising your sleep for neuroplasticity and learning and much more. To sign up for the news letters, simply go to huberman lab dot com.

There you provide your email. I'd like emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. And as I mentioned before, the newsletter is completely zero cost. Thank you once again for join me for today's discussion with doctor alan shore. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.