The Huberman Lab Podcast discusses neuroscience: how our brain and its connections with the organs of our body control our perceptions, our behaviors, and our health. We also discuss existing and emerging tools for measuring and changing how our nervous system works. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a tenured Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. His laboratory studies neural regeneration, neuroplasticity, and brain states such as stress, focus, fear, and optimal performance. For more than 20 years, Dr. Huberman has consistently published original research findings and review articles in top-level peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, Neuron, and Current Biology. He is a regular member of several National Institutes of Health review panels and a Fellow of the McKnight Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Dr. Huberman regularly consults for technology development companies, professional athletic organizations, and various units of U.S. and Canadian Special Operations.
Essentials: The Science & Process of Healing from Grief
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain the neuroscience of grief, including how the brain maps relationships across three dimensions — space, time, and closeness — and why losing someone requires a remapping of those neural circuits. I describe how grief differs from depression, the role of oxytocin in driving yearning after a loss, and why people move through grief at different rates. I also discuss science-based tools for grieving adaptively, including how to access feelings of attachment while decoupling them from episodic memory. Finally, I explain how foundational biology — particularly sleep and cortisol rhythms — shapes our capacity to navigate the grieving process.
Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) Grief
(00:01:47) Myths of Grief, Kubler-Ross & fMRI
(00:03:56) Brain Mapping Experiment, Proximity
(00:07:05) Inferior Parietal Lobule; Space, Time & Closeness
(00:09:20) Episodic Memory & Remapping After Loss
(00:11:28) Sponsor: Eight Sleep
(00:14:21) Tool: Dedicated Time, Counterfactual Thinking & Guilt
(00:15:52) Oxytocin & Individual Differences in Grief
(00:18:21) Prairie Voles, Monogamy & Nucleus Accumbens
(00:22:30) Sponsor: LMNT
(00:24:48) Vagal Tone, Emotional Disclosure & Bereavement Writing Study
(00:29:40) Cortisol Rhythms, Complicated Grief & Sunlight
(00:33:03) Sponsor: AG1
(00:34:59) Rational Grieving, Neuroplasticity & NSDR
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