That Neuroscience Guy - Season 3 Finale - The Neuroscience of Loss and Grief

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

It's challenging to deal with the loss of a loved one. The grieving process is long and complicated, but what in the brain is causing this? In the season 3 finale of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience of how we process loss and the ensuing grief. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. We've all experienced loss and grief, and it's not a pleasant thing. Loss of a significant other, a family member, a friend, or even a pet. I myself lost someone very close to me recently. And even though I understand what's going on in my brain, I'm hard pressed to do anything about it. On today's podcast, the neuroscience of loss and grief. Loss is hard to deal with. In terms of what is going on in the brain, it has a lot to do with how we identify ourselves.

When someone is close to you, very close to you, your brain begins to think of us as opposed to me. For a lot of our life, our brain focuses on this idea of I or just me. Then as you get close to people, you shift from me to us. You know, with close family members, this happens at a pretty early stage with significant others a little bit later in life, but you develop this us identity. And there's some really cool neuroimaging data to support this shift. When we have the experience of being in a relationship, the sense of who we're bound up with is the other person, like I've just said. The word sibling, the word spouse implies two people by definition.

And so when the other person is gone, we suddenly have to learn a totally new set of rules to operate in the world. The we is as important as the you and me, and the brain, interestingly, really doesn't code it that way. So when people say, I feel like I've lost a part of myself, it's for a reason. Your brain also feels that way, as if it were the codes we are almost the same as the code for I. Now this relates in part to something we talked about in a previous episode. There's one working theory that suggests that the left-hand side of our brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is basically maintaining a worldview. Our view of how the world works, the people that are in it, what they're like, how they behave, how we act and what we believe in, our worldview. And the left-hand side is trying to maintain that. The left-hand side of

that prefrontal cortex is just like, yes, this is the way the world works. Now, what's supposed to happen, of course, is sometimes the world changes. So that's the job of the right prefrontal cortex. It's supposed to update your worldview when it's no longer valid. Now, when there's a loss, sort of what's happening in your brain, at least in terms of this one working theory, is that your emotional system paralyzes the right hemisphere's ability to update the worldview. So the right hemisphere is trying to say, well, hey, this person is not around anymore. We need a worldview that doesn't encompass them. But your emotional system is sort of shutting that down and just sort of saying, no, no, no, the worldview is the what we believe it to be. And that person is still there in some sense.

Now, you might be able to accept that they're gone. So your rational brain, the prefrontal cortex, is going, yes, this person is gone. But the emotional system is just trumping that to such an extent you can't do anything about it. And of course, with the emotional system, we're talking about the amygdala, the insular cortex, and the parts of the brain that release hormones and

control behavior through the autonomic nervous system. It's kind of like when we talked about breakups and love in a previous episode. Now, if we keep thinking about the person that we lost, then our left hemisphere is also not able to let go and maintain the worldview. So that's adding to it as well. The right hemisphere, because of all these memories that are constantly being brought forth, is also having trouble updating. So the update from the right hemisphere that's needed to reshape your worldview isn't happening because of the emotional experience and the emotional system, but the left hemisphere, because it's hanging on to memories, is sort of saying, well, hey, this is the worldview.

This is still a part of my life. So you can see the problem, and you probably heard lots of practical advice about this, but this is why it works in your brain. This is why it's so important to create distance when you've had a loss in your life, to accept it and try to create some space for yourself. It's why it's important to at some point let go. Now, you might want to think you want to hold onto that person forever, and I understand that, trust me. But the reality is you need to update your worldview to a new one, and that, trust me. But the reality is you need to update your worldview to a new one. And that new worldview can still include the memory of the person, but not the one that's so prominent where it's just a part of your life every second of every

day. And this, of course, is why people say it's so important to move on in these situations. So that's a bit about loss. Let's talk a little bit about grief. Basically, because of the loss, your emotional system is completely on overdrive. If you think of the way we discussed emotional versus rational decision-making, you can see the problem. The rational system is trying to cope with the fact someone's gone, and this is contributing to this updating we've talked about, but the emotional system is just firing so strongly. It's just winning the battle.

Now, the range of emotions that someone experiences when they're grieving is as long as the list of emotions that exist for any relationship. You know, people report panic, anxiety, sadness, yearning. But there's also difficulty concentrating and confusion about your life. And this is just because your emotional system is firing so much. That loss has led to grief. And that grief, like I've said, is just the emotional system running wild. And the emotion can be really intense.

Grief is like someone turns up the dial on the whole thing, like I've said, and it interferes with us, right? It's interfering with our lives because we're grieving. We can feel anger, intense anger. We can explode at people and yell at them. You can feel pity on yourself. And it's just really, at the end of the day, these neural regions firing away like crazy. And that's just really, at the end of the day, these neural regions firing away like crazy. And that's why if you've got someone that's grieving, it's important to realize what's going on. Part of it is under their control, but at the same time, their emotional system is firing so much, it's going to lead to some irrational choices. And if you want more on that, you can look back at our episode about emotional decision-making. Now there's studies out there that focus in on that,

and it's pretty complex. It's not just the emotional system. I know I've focused on that a lot, but when you do dive into the neuroimaging data, you see that there's activation in a lot of regions, like the anterior cingulate cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, and the prefrontal cortex, which we've mentioned, the insulin, the amygdala. So the neuroscience or the neuro reasoning, if you will, behind grief is not just your emotional system running awry. And I want to make that point clear because sometimes people like to sort of say, hey, it's just this part of the brain. It's just my amygdala. We even have a t-shirt about that. But the reality is these complex emotions are a product of multiple brain regions friaring together and they all contribute little

bits and pieces to the story. Now, we'd like to think our rational system would some point would kick in and it leads to some interesting phenomena like the fact we want something we can't have. If you lose a significant other and they die, for instance, you know, you can't have them back. That's not the nature of the way death works, at least from a neuroscience perspective. But why do we still want them? Like, why is that feeling there? But why do we still want them? Why is that feeling there? Well, again, we go back into the emotional system,

the amygdala, the insulin cortex, these other brain regions. They're very active because you care. So all of those emotions are seeping through, like I've said multiple times. It's also tied to the autonomic nervous system. I mentioned that briefly, but it triggers the other things, like heart rate and the rest of it because your whole system is just firing like crazy. And then of course there's hormones. All this emotional activity causes massive releases of hormones into the bloodstream. And this sort of even jazzes up the emotional response even more. And finally, another kick is that the amygdala, because it's firing so much,

is also activating the hippocampus, which is memory. And that's why you get flooded with memories. So the emotional system in some at this point is literally shutting down your rational system. It's shutting down your ability for the right prefrontal cortex to update your worldview. It's releasing hormones. It's triggering the autonomic nervous system, and it's also activating memories. So this is why you get the flood, and this is why loss and grief are so hard to deal with. I'll add here, it's also natural to have things we don't want. You could argue at some level that our low-level systems are prone to do this. It's tied to things like the scarcity heuristic, where something that's rare has incredibly perceived value. So at some level, there's

actually even a rational component to wanting the significant person that you've lost back, because it's got so much value in your brain, because you can't have it, that it's almost a rational choice. I'll wrap up by saying what we can do about it. Well, one of the classic things is that time heals all wounds, and it does as long as you progress through things naturally. And the reason for this is simple. As much as you might stare at pictures of significant others, they're not around to activate the emotional response all the time, and they're not around to sort of maintain that us versus I perspective. So at some point, your brain slowly does adjust.

Your right hemisphere begins to do its job and your emotional system can't fire forever. So eventually it slows down and your rational brain kicks in and you heal. To help this process, it's important to remove reminders. Obviously, it's a choice you could make to stare at a picture of someone that you've lost, but doing that's not really a great idea because it's just going to reactivate the emotional system and all the things we've discussed. This is also why keeping busy works. You're distracting yourself and if your brain is busy doing other things, you can't think about that person you've lost and your grief will be a little bit less.

And like I've said, eventually you have to let go and move on. And this is a part of the natural process. And of course, this is a really crucial time to practice good brain health. One of my favorite things. Remember sleep. This is a time where you need sleep. It might be really difficult to achieve. I've been there, but you need to sleep. It's the single greatest determinant of mental health in my mind. And of course, exercise and diet. You know, exercise does all sorts of positive things for your brain, which I don't need to discuss again. They're on previous episodes and same with diet. And if you remember the other one I added in here, which is quite common, it's not just my idea, is social interaction. If you're experiencing loss and grief, this is a time to be around

other people because in general, when we're around other people, we have positive social interactions and that activates your emotional system in a different way and makes you happy. and that activates your emotional system in a different way and makes you happy. Well, there you have it. The end of season three of That Neuroscience Guy. Another 21 episodes done with a bunch of neuroscience bites. We're going to take August off, but we are coming back. We'll be back in September.

So on that note, please send us ideas. Some people have DM'd me on Twitter. You can always email us at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. But we need your ideas. Some people have DM'd me on Twitter. You can always email us at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. But we need your ideas. The podcast is supposed to be about the neuroscience of daily life. So tell us what you think about. Tell us what you want us to help explain so you can understand it a little bit better. Check out the website. Etsy and Patreon are there. We've got some t-shirts and we've had some sales. Thank you so much for that. And Patreon, where you can donate money to support us directly. And remember, all of that money goes to Matt and Elle, two graduate students in the K-Lab.

And a big thanks to Matt and Elle. Matt does all the sound production and Elle is in charge of our social media. And they both do such an amazing job. And I couldn't do the podcast without them. And of course you, thank you so much for listening. We just broke 150,000 downloads and I can honestly tell you back at the start of COVID when I started this little project and finally got it off the ground, I would have never guessed that. So thank you so much for listening to the podcast and please subscribe of course. My name is Olof Krogolsen and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you in September

for season four of the podcast.