What sets trauma apart from regular bad experiences? A leading neuroscientist explains.

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Aided by best-selling psychology books of the last decade, such as Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score, discussions about trauma and awareness of how to deal with it have entered popular public discourse. From police departments to school classrooms, trauma-informed approaches have taken center stage.

But leading neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett challenges the popular notion that trauma resides solely in the body. She asserts that trauma is rooted in the brain's predictions and the construction of our experiences: When an adverse experience becomes traumatic, the brain heavily weighs and anticipates that experience in its future predictions. This ongoing prediction and re-experiencing of the traumatic event strengthens the neural connections associated with it, making the predictions more likely to occur in the future.

Rather than focusing on the body as the site of healing, she suggests that changing the brain's models of prediction is what needs to be addressed to break free from the cycle of trauma. By understanding the role of predictions and the brain's plasticity, Feldman Barrett offers hope for transforming traumatic experiences and finding new, lasting paths to healing.

Read the full video transcript: https://bigthink.com/the-well/neurosc...

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