Andrew Huberman - Dr. Immordino-Yang

1) Dr. Immordino-Yang discusses the role of inspiration and awe in learning and life experience. She explains that these high-level complex states of mind are fundamental to being human as they hook into basic biological machinery that keeps us alive. Our beliefs, experiences, and interpretations of the meaning of things all contribute to the stories we construct about the nature of reality, which become the through lines to organize our consciousness and experience.

2) Immordino-Yang on the role of the brain in controlling the body and how it interacts with our experiences and emotions. Dr. Immordino-Yang credits Antonio Damasio for introducing her to the idea that our ability to represent the internal and external state of our body is the foundation for consciousness and the mind. She explains that our biology is inherently social and interdependent, highlighting the role of cultural context and social relationships in co-constructing a sense of self. The conversation between the brain and body is a dynamic one, happening in direct ways neurochemically and in broader, slower fluctuations.

3) Immordino and Huberman explore the interconnectedness of the brain, body, and mind and how it leads to dynamic possibility spaces. They discuss how humans construct meaningful experiences over time, which are reflected in stories, and that our early experiences lay templates for recognition and meaning that we may seek to experience throughout our lives. Dr. Immordino-Yang also provides an example of her daughter's emotional connection to her at different stages of development, highlighting the role of attachment in making sense of the world and in adapting to it. Overall, emotions and social factors impact learning and development in complex and dynamic ways, and the interplay between the brain, body, and mind is crucial.

4) Immordino explains how we start to elaborate very basic physiological states, such as attachment and aversion, into mental states like beliefs and love songs. She gives an example of her daughter's development from age two to age four, where her daughter went from experiencing love as a concrete embodied physical thing to being able to conceptualize it as an idea. As our knowledge base grows, we can add examples to our feelings, but we are essentially recognizing basic emotional states and binning our experiences into them as a way to navigate the infinitely complex world around us.

5) Immordino discusses the primitive physiological mechanisms that humans share with all life forms which become motivational mechanisms to keep individuals alive. She explains that these processes, which are essentially there to keep us alive through constant adjustment, are complex and dynamic. The emotions that we feel are conjured from these basic physiological processes, and this becomes the basis for consciousness and awareness. Her research on the impact of social stimuli on individuals showed that emotions, whether based on pain or pleasure, build neurobiologically as long as they pertain to a story that is conjured in our minds. This leap in cognitive experience is unique to humans and fully developed only after a protracted period.

6) Immordino discusses how humans have a fundamental need to make sense of the world around them by creating stories based on the emotions and social factors they experience. These stories evolve and become more complex over time as developmental processes shape the way humans experience the world and learn to notice and interpret certain things. While humans share basic emotions with other organisms, these emotions become the basis of ideas, beliefs, values, and identities that transcend time and are essential to cultural spaces.

7) Immordino discusses how adding a narrative or context to a visual image changes the way emotions are represented in the brain. While physical pain, such as a broken bone, elicits a straightforward response in the visual cortex, the addition of story and context invokes the default mode network, a system of brain areas that activate when the brain is at rest or daydreaming and is associated with social and emotional processing. This network was found to activate even during effortful tasks when participants were asked to consider how they felt about a story, showing the importance of cultural and contextual knowledge for emotional processing.

8) Immordino discusses the power of storytelling in activating the brain's default mode network, which is responsible for introspection and self-reflection. She explains that in experiments, they found that stories where people had to bring a lot of contextual knowledge to fully appreciate, such as the losing of a loved one or the complex emotions surrounding an act of courage and bravery, activated these neural systems more than stories of physical or cognitive skill. Additionally, they found that people's psychological reactions to a story in a pre-experiment interview could predict how their default mode network would activate when listening to that story in an fMRI scanner.

9) Immordino discusses the impact of experiences and cultural values on the way people perceive and remember scenes, as well as how emotions and social factors might influence learning. She suggests that emotions might be tied to past experiences and cultural values, and that people might be mapping to some subconscious awareness of past experiences when they feel inspired by something. Additionally, cultural values can change the way people observe and remember scenes, as evidenced by classic work comparing how Japanese and US individuals perceive a picture of an underwater scene.

10) Immordino discusses how humans impose interpretive power and adapt to what they do next relative to the way they accommodate or assimilate into their schema. This has an impact on the way humans experience the world more broadly. For example, the dehumanization process in events such as genocide and the Holocaust can fundamentally shift the way people naritize the context of those events and in turn view other human beings.

11) Immordino talks about the need for society to rethink the process of educating young people by enabling them to engage systematically with their thoughts and beliefs. She believes the current education system has very basic beliefs about what counts as knowing and what is worth thinking about, leading us to a place where we are actively discouraged from creating complex perspectives on ideas. Instead, she calls for the building of education systems from preschool to engage children systematically in intellectual curiosity by enabling them to explore and understand the world around them.

12) Immordino discusses how the traditional educational system stifles children's natural curiosity, intrinsic motivation, and their inclination towards deep idea-based learning. While children are naturally curious and have a human proclivity for deep thinking about ideas, the current educational system treats this inclination as inefficient or insubordinate, leading to dissociation from the material among students. Furthermore, the current system creates a desire in children to become a computer rather than a human, which focuses on the buzz of performance rather than intrinsic pleasure in learning.

13) Immordino discusses the relationship between emotions and learning. She argues that whatever one’s emotions are about, that is what one is learning about. If emotions are about high-stakes accountability measures, then that is what one learns how to think about, perform, but not how to think about the ideas with the intrinsic power of using math to understand the world in a different way. She suggests that accountability systems have taught people to prioritize their emotions about outcomes and performance rather than the actual ideas in play.

14) Immordino argues that the current education system's focus on academic rigor and achievement is limiting young people's natural inclination to build and construct meaning in spaces that engage with emotions, perspectives, social issues, and existential questions. This focus is diminishing their inner drive and stunting their ability to grow themselves, leading to a mental health crisis in adolescents across demographic groups, especially young girls. She suggests that adults need to help young people learn to be reflective, systematic, and rigorous with themselves as they navigate complex problem spaces, sit with uncertainty, and think through the possibilities through intellectually humble and curious inquiry.

15) Immordino shares her early memories of learning and teaching. As a child, she was fascinated by the natural world and was able to inspire others through her knowledge. However, she struggled with traditional schooling and the stress of completing homework. To learn, she engaged in cultural experiences, such as traveling to different countries and exploring woodworking and boat building. These experiences taught her adaptable approaches to learning and helped her understand the power of emotions in educational contexts.

16) Immordino speaks about her journey from being a French literature major to becoming a science teacher in South Boston. She created an interdisciplinary approach to teaching science to seventh-grade students, which focused on appreciating the dynamic complexity of the natural world. Her diverse classroom of students from different cultural backgrounds made her realize the importance of using scientific ways to explore and understand the world, which helped her understand how emotions, culture, and social factors can impact the learning experience.

17) Immordino discusses how nuanced emotions impact learning beyond basic fears. She explains that emotional interactions that occur in a classroom setting highlight how biological and psychological development play crucial roles in how individuals organize themselves to build mental capacity and overall health. She stresses the importance of approaching learning from the perspective of the moment as opposed to just the psychological theories that explain it. Additionally, the fear of offending anyone and the cancel culture that currently exists has created a fear of exploring ideas openly, which in turn restricts the ability to freely explore concepts and learn.

18) Immordino discusses the two different modes of thinking, the default mode, and the task-positive mode. The default mode is associated with self-awareness and constructing broader inferential narratives, while the task-positive mode is necessary for being vigilant in the immediate physical or social situation around you. If a person feels physically or emotionally unsafe, they can't conjure up an alternative perspective or construct a meaningful narrative. Dr. Immordino-Yang also shared that people tend to have multiple social media handles, embodying different versions of themselves safely.

19) Immordino discusses how the way we structure our environment can unintentionally impose mental models of other people's possibility spaces onto them, leading to feelings of discomfort or dissatisfaction. This is exemplified by a story of a second-grade student who wrote a letter to his teacher about a behavior chart displayed in the classroom and how it represented the teacher assuming that all kids are capable of being badly behaved. Dr. Immordino-Yang suggests that deconstructing our understanding of things that bother us can help us manage those spaces in a new way, leading to new possibilities for engagement.

20) Immordino discusses the importance of deconstructing ideas surrounding power dynamics and oppression in order to rebuild them in new ways that promote equity and understanding. This process requires developing skills and dispositions for deconstructing and constructing safe cultural spaces to think together, which can be facilitated through interdisciplinary education and civic discourse. The goal of this process is to build a more adaptive and pro-social society where everyone can flourish and belong, with a foundational value being the importance of free speech for all.

21) Immordino discusses her view on mirror neurons. She argues that it is not that there are special neurons firing when we see other people do something, but rather we are imposing our expectations onto the world, and in order to activate these mirror regions, we have to share and intuitively understand the goal of other people's actions. These mirror regions are involved in planning and goal-oriented actions, and they are deeply interconnected with each other. Dr. Immordino-Yang believes that our natural proclivity is to try and appreciate another person's actions, feelings, and experiences by leveraging our own, and that we are inherently social, cultural learners.

22) Immordino responds to a text message from the host's son about the benefits of cold showers and whether continued practice would lead to getting sick. She explains that the spike of adrenaline produced through cold exposure is neuroprotective in the short term, but chronic stress is not good for the body, so hot showers and sauna-type activities may be better for an ill system. The conversation then turns to the importance of the development of the person in education rather than just learning, and the need for a different goal in education. Dr. Immordino-Yang highlights the importance of designing learning opportunities to change who people are capable of becoming.