Essentials: The Science & Process of Healing from Grief

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Life Sciences, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 30.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman 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 Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable
0:05.8	science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman,
0:12.9	and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are
0:18.4	going to discuss how we conceptualize grief,
0:21.2	both at an emotional and at a logical level.
0:24.2	I'm going to teach you about the neuroscience
0:26.1	and the psychology of grief
0:28.1	and incredible findings that have been made
0:30.6	in just a few key laboratories that point to the fact
0:34.8	that we essentially map our experience of people in three dimensions.
0:40.2	Let's just give you a little hint of what those dimensions are.
0:43.0	They relate to space where people are, time,
0:46.8	when people are, I'll explain what that means,
0:49.8	and a dimension called closeness.
0:52.4	And how those three dimensions of space, time, and closeness
0:55.4	are what establish very close bonds with people and are what require remapping, reorganization
1:02.5	within our emotional framework and our logical framework when we lose somebody for whatever reason.
1:08.6	The important thing to point out is that grief is a process.
1:11.6	Like any biological or psychological event, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
1:15.6	And I do believe that being able to orient in terms of where you are in that process can be immensely beneficial.
1:21.6	Not just for predicting how long it's going to last, but in order to conceptualize the person or animal that you lost
1:29.1	in a way that allows you to best preserve their memory while maintaining your own functional
	...

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