Emotions, Motions, Body Budgets, and Body Memories

Notes and Applications of the Scientific Research of Dr Lisa Feldman-Barrett

Introduction

The latest episode of the Huberman Lab podcast was a good reminder for me of the scientific research of Dr Lisa Feldman-Barret [LFB]. What particularly struck me this time around, was how supportive LFB’s ideas are of our own concepts that I have developed with my friend, colleague and therapist

Lilian Sjøberg

, especially Lilian’s “body memories” concept central to her therapy practices. In particular, it reminded me of the terrific conversation Lilian had with Innovation Scientist Tony Fitzgerald, about how the brain is a “Predicting Organ” that constantly predicts the immediate future based on past experiences.

Prediction theories from science and how they fit perfectly into alternative treatment of Parkinson's disease (and most other diseases)

According to LFB, these predictions include entire motor patterns, body postures, motions and movements, as they prepare the body for action or inaction.

The Huberman Lab podcast also reminded me that I had previously made some notes for myself from reading LFB’s book and from watching her previous video presentations. So I thought it would be worth sharing these notes here, in case others find them useful or fascinating. Then we will consider the pragmatic outcomes, in the context of our ideas about chronic illnesses, health and well-being.

First, here is LFB’s latest Huberman Lab appearance - the video description contains a good list of timestamps.

Notes from a Presentation

Here are some high level notes I made from a prior presentation by LFB, “The Secret Life of the Brain”. This is interesting, novel and challenging material. I made some bullet points of the main claims for quick reference:

• the brain budgets the body resources [water, salt, hormones, physiology, etc] in response from signals from the body and external context;

• the signals from the body are low resolution and fuzzy, otherwise it would constantly consume all attention;

• mood is an overall low resolution measure of internal state or body budget;

• emotion gives meaning to mood given the external context;

• no single, specific area of the brain is associated with a given emotion;

• no single, specific emotion is associated with a given area of the brain, e.g. fear lights up regions of the brain outside amygdala, amygdala lights up in any other novel context;

• variation is the norm - statistical distributions of brain and body states, the average may not exist in anyone;

• triune model of the brain, e.g. mammalian brain, lizard brain, is a myth;

• emotions are not baked into the brain at birth, but emotions are created on the fly, as needed;

• the brain uses predictions to manage body budget, based on past experiences of the context;

• emotions are not reactions to the world, they are constructions of what your bodily sensations mean in the context or situation you are in - links or explains what is going in your body in relation the events in the world so that your brain knows how to keep you alive and well;

• emotions which seem to happen to you, are actually made by your brain automatically;

• the emotions which you seem to read in other people, are actually coming in part from inside your own head - when you see a smile as anger or happiness it is because your brain is guessing what that signal means in the context, including the context from inside your own body, because your body is a context for your brain which you take with you everywhere you go [so you may read different emotions into the same photo of someone, depending on your own current affect].

Notes on Body Budget

Perhaps the most important part of LFBs ideas, in the context of health and wellbeing, is her Body Budget concept. Below are some abridged notes on this from her book “How Emotions Are Made”.

“[Body-budgeting regions of] the brain.. send predictions to the body to control its internal environment: speed up the heart, slow down breathing, release more cortisol, metabolize more glucose,... play a vital role in keeping you alive.”

“Each time your brain moves any part of your body, inside or out, it spends some of its energy resources... to run your organs, your metabolism, and your immune system. You replenish your body’s resources by eating, drinking, and sleeping, and you reduce your body’s spending by relaxing with loved ones.... To manage all of this spending and replenishing, your brain must constantly predict your body’s energy needs, like a budget for your body... make predictions to estimate the resources to keep you alive and flourishing, using past experience as a guide.”

“When your brain predicts that your body will need a quick burst of energy, these regions instruct the adrenal gland in your kidneys to release the hormone cortisol... Its main purpose is to flood the bloodstream with glucose to provide immediate energy to cells, allowing, for example, muscle cells to stretch and contract so you can run. Your body-budgeting regions also make you breathe more deeply to get more oxygen into your bloodstream and dilate your arteries to get that oxygen to your muscles more quickly so your body can move.”

“We ask volunteers to sit ... view pictures of animals, flowers, babies, food, money, guns, surfers, skydivers, car crashes, and other objects and scenes. These pictures impact their body budget; [some make their] heart rates can go up, blood pressures change, blood vessels dilate. These budgetary changes, which prepare the body to fight or flee, occur even though the volunteers are not moving and have no conscious plan to move.”

“Other people regulate your body budget too. When you interact with your friends, parents, children, lovers, teammates, therapist, or other close companions, you and they synchronize breathing, heart beats, and other physical signals, leading to tangible benefits. Holding hands with loved ones, or even keeping their photo on your desk at work, reduces activation in your body-budgeting regions and makes you less bothered by pain.”

“Every person you encounter, every prediction you make, every idea you imagine, and every sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell that you fail to anticipate all have budgetary consequences and corresponding interoceptive predictions.”

“Your body-budgeting regions keep predicting adjustments to your budget long after the predicted need is over. You therefore may take a long time to calm down, even if you know there is nothing wrong. Whenever you make a big deposit or withdrawal from your body budget — eating [digesting], exercising, injuring yourself — you might have to wait for your brain to catch up.”

Pragmatics

In the context of chronic illness, I suggest this is what we get when our body budget becomes permanently depleted, and can’t catch up. This can be due to a variety of cumulative impacts which each deplete a part of the body budget, until a “straw which breaks the camels back”, so that the brain is then constantly predicting that the “energy banks are empty”.

Cumulative Impacts: The Movie

In particular, I believe we get struck in chronic conditions when our brain is constantly predicting threats and disappointments due to many layers of past experiences. Importantly, according to LFB, the triggers and reminders in the environment can result in recapitulations of entire motor patterns, body postures, contractions and tensions. This also aligns well with our concept of chronic illnesses, in that our observation is they almost always involve movement disorders, dystonia, chronic pains, postural collapse, stiffness, tremors, tics, freeze ups, etc. These are the manifestation of body memories of past experience of stressful episodes being constantly triggered in the present.

Our “antidotes” to the these chronic issues align well with LFB’s own advice on things which can increase availability of the body budget:

The Antidote to Suffering in the Modern World

There is however one very important addition that Lilian brings to the table. The predictions that end up getting us stuck with a depleted body budget are based on past experiences and motor patterns which were adaptive, and kept us alive, at the time, but no longer serve us in the present. Via various therapeutic interventions, and practices, it is possible to rewrite the memories of these past experiences, and hence resolve the body memories, so that the brain is now predicting on information which now serves us. See the discussion between Lilian and Tony mentioned above for an in depth conversation about this.

We have also created an online course “Emotional Trauma, Fascia and Breathing”, that provides further details about Lilian’s therapy techniques, and more pragmatic and actionable steps we can take towards better health, in line with the concepts explored above: