Essentials: The Science & Process of Healing from Grief
5/28/202639 min
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
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First 90 secondsAndrew Huberman· Host0:00
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are going to discuss how we conceptualize grief, both at an emotional and at a logical level. I'm going to teach you about the neuroscience and the psychology of grief and incredible findings that have been made in just a few key laboratories that point to the fact that we essentially map our experience of people in three dimensions. I'll just give you a little hint of what those dimensions are. They relate to space, where people are; time, when people are, I'll explain what that means; and a dimension called closeness, and how those three dimensions of space, time, and closeness are what establish very close bonds with people and are what require remapping, reorganization within our emotional framework and our logical framework when we lose somebody for whatever reason. The important thing to point out is that grief is a process. Like any biological or psychological event, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I do believe that being able to orient in terms of where you are in that process can be immensely beneficial, not just for predicting how long it's going to last, but in order to conceptualize the person or animal that you lost in a way that