Lisa Feldman Barrett Says Your Brain Doesn't Work the Way You Think It Does
Professor [[Lisa Feldman Barrett]] argues in [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] that the brain’s primary job is bodily regulation (allostasis) and that it continually predicts sensations and actions, constructing perception and emotion rather than merely responding to the world. Drawing on research first presented in [[How Emotions Are Made]], she explains the body-budget metaphor, shows how prediction underlies skills from baseball to sensing rain, and proposes that emotions are constructed using learned concepts—what she calls emotional granularity. Barrett links these ideas to responsibility, policing errors when predictions misfire, and the toll chronic uncertainty like [[COVID-19]] takes on the nervous system, arguing that expanding experience and concepts lets people alter future predictions and exercise more effective control over behavior, and to cultivate resilience in the face of stress.