When you're angry or do something impulsive, that's your reptilian brain in action, right?

And if you talk yourself out of that impulsive act or gain control over your wrath, that's your neocortex at work, isn't it?

And those emotions you feel, such as grief when a loved one dies, or joy at the birth of a child.

Those are just things that happen to you in reaction to events in your life, correct?

And they're universal across cultures, aren't they?

Well, maybe not.

What if emotions are things that our brain constructs

to make sense of the signals it gets from our body and from the world around us?

What if the way you think about your body and from the world around us.

What if the way you think about your brain and how and why it functions is just plain wrong?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association,

that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm Kim Mills.

Our guest today is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a distinguished professor of psychology at Northeastern University. Dr. Barrett has spent more than three decades

studying emotion. Her research has helped to develop the idea that the human brain creates

emotions by predicting rather than reacting to what happens in the world around us.

She's published more than 240 scientific papers and is also a prolific science communicator writing articles and books about brain science for the general public.

Her two most recent books are how emotions are made, published in 2017, and seven and a half

lessons about the brain, which came out in November. Thank you for joining

us today, Dr. Barrett. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, Kim. I want to start with an idea that opens

your new book, which is that the main purpose of the brain is not to think, but to regulate our

bodies. This may seem counterintuitive or come as a surprise to some of our listeners. I'm

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