That Neuroscience Guy - Season 9 Premiere - Revisiting the Neuroscience of Grief

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

To kick off Season 9, we explore a personal angle by revisiting the neuroscience of grief. 

Hi, my name is Ola Krikolson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Well, I'm sorry for the late start to this season. I'm sorry for the late start to this season. The simple truth is that my mother died somewhat unexpectedly at the beginning of September, and that delayed things in my life a little bit, so my apologies. It's also the reason for today's topic.

When we started the podcast, I really wanted to focus on the neuroscience of everyday life. You know, what's behind the things that we experience and try to keep away from the theory that we use in the classrooms and focus on reality. And I think we've done an okay job of that. Some of our episodes have definitely been grounded in everyday life, but other episodes have drifted and become a bit theoretical. So I want to revisit the neuroscience of grief because I've recently lived it. I was very close with my mother and we talked every day. She lived in New Zealand, so I didn't get to see her as much as I wanted to. I was lucky in that I spent a month with her in May and I spent every day with her. And then all of a sudden I got a phone call and she was gone. Now, I don't want

to get too much into it, but I want to dedicate this to you, mom. Patricia Susan Hall Craig Olson, the best mom anyone could ever ask for. And I want to use it to revisit grief and walk you through the grief process and what's going on in your brain when it happens. Because when I did the episode on grief the first time, I hadn't really experienced it. And now I have, and I've thought about it a lot with my day job lens on, if you will. So here we go. The neuroscience of grief. on, if you will. So here we go. The neuroscience of grief. Well, initially, if something traumatic happens to you and it's a surprise, you have disbelief. And the reason you have disbelief, if you think back to stuff we've talked about, is your left prefrontal cortex and other parts of the prefrontal cortex, but the left side specifically,

you know, it tries to maintain a worldview. It sort of knows this is the way the world functions, all right, and this is what I believe to be true. And all of a sudden, you're given this shocking piece of information, you know, in my case that my mother had passed. And it's a contradiction with your worldview. So the right prefrontal cortex is trying to update your worldview and say, hey, there's this new thing. But it's so surprising that left prefrontal cortex, in a sense, pushes back. And that's where your disbelief comes from. Information that is sort of contrary to what you expect the world to be like

and in my case i literally was talking to my mother the day before so to find out you know to wake up the next morning to a phone call from new zealand and find out she's you know in the hospital and things aren't good was a shock and i i had trouble believing it because my worldview was that my mother was okay. Now, you know, with this comes a massive emotional response. And of course, it wouldn't be a podcast episode on this podcast without, you know, talking about the amygdala. But these kind of emotional things are charged. You have all your memories of the significant other or whatever is causing you grief. You have all your memories of the significant other or whatever is causing you grief. And your amygdala just starts blasting away.

And this, of course, triggers the rest of your nervous system in a sense. This is where the tears come from, the breathing, the chills, the sweats, whatever it is. Because remember, the amygdala controls these functions in the peripheral nervous system and the autonomic, you know, the sympathetic nervous system, this kind of stuff. So all of those reactions are triggered by this massive emotional explosion from the amygdala. Now, you might experience confusion in this initial stage of grief. Again, this is because of this discrepancy between the left and the right prefrontal cortex, your current worldview and this new worldview. But it's also a very unexpected situation a lot of the time when something traumatic happens. And your logical system

is trying to make sense of it. You know, what do I do next? You know, what am I supposed to do? But you don't have a lot of information. So you're literally going back to very basic like well I guess in this situation and then while you're trying to do that logical thinking your emotional system is throwing out options like boom boom boom like my system was like drive to the airport and in my case that made no sense because I knew that flights to New Zealand didn't leave till night and I found out in the morning but you know your emotional system is throwing out these ideas and this is the confusion because you're in this unexpected situation and you've got your logical system trying to deal with something it's not prepared for and your emotional system is biasing

these ideas that your gut hunch system is throwing out there. And that's where that confusion comes from. Now, there might be a bit of expectancy with this as well. Like in my case, I found out my mom was in the hospital. The prognosis wasn't good. It was expected I wouldn't make it to New Zealand on time, despite my best efforts to do so. So in my case, I had this feeling that I knew what was coming and it triggers another round of emotion because I'd been told by a doctor and I'd also been told by my cousin, who's also a doctor, that the chances of me making the journey to New Zealand takes about 30 hours from where I live. You know, it wasn't going to happen to be there in time. So when I actually did find out that my mother had passed,

I was over the Pacific on a flight. And due to the modern world and in-flight Wi-Fi, I got an email from my cousin who basically said all of it, you know, she's passed. And that sense of expectancy is there as well. And you might experience this when you're going through grief, especially like pre-grief almost in the sense

where in this case, I'd already grieved because it should have this massive problem. And then, you know, there's this sort of just waiting for the inevitable. And that's a natural response within your brain. Now, from that part onwards, I found myself crying unexpectedly. And this is quite common in these situations. I observed it in a lot of my cousins and other family members. I don't cry that often myself, unless you put on a good tearjerker movie. But basically, it's emotional triggers and thoughts. And what I mean by that is you're in a very charged emotional state. Something traumatic has happened to you. So your amygdala doesn't really settle back down.

Your amygdala is just ramped up through this whole time. And this is actually one of the reasons when people grieve, they get very tired because it's very hard to live in that emotionally charged state for an extended period of time. You're consuming a lot of energy. And what happens when your amygdala is supercharged like that, just a memory or a thought, you know, in my case, I just thought about something about my mother and you just start crying because your amygdala is ramped right up and you have this memory and it just triggers this emotional response. So it's perfectly normal. I want to assure you this because I didn't think it was normal until I went through it, but this crying unexpectedly, this is something

that you can expect to do, if that makes sense. Now, while you're navigating through this as well, when I got to New Zealand, people were kind of surprised by how calm I was and the state I was in. Well, your brain's still trying to navigate the world, right? Your brain is aware and it's compartmentalized and it knows that this traumatic event that causes grief has happened. But you're still trying to navigate the world, right? You know you need to get from A to B. You know, you might not want to eat as much, but at some point you'll get hungry. And your attentional system focuses on these things. And again, with your emotional system going in overdrive, your attentional system might

almost over-focus in a sense. So if you are acting normal in a situation like this, it's probably just because your brain's trying to say, okay, I do need to interact with the world. And here's how I'm going to do this. Now, not everyone goes through that. Some people just stay in the crying phase. But some of you, if you do get calm, there's nothing wrong with you. That's just your brain trying to navigate the world. And it might also be a form of protection. Your brain at some point

is interested in self-preservation and, you know, breaking down completely and just collapsing on the floor, you know, fair enough if you do it for a little bit of time, but after a while, your brain's going to say, okay, well, hang on. We still have to function. We need to survive. Now, another thing I experienced is I spent a fair bit of time in my mother's house by myself, and I found myself talking to my mother. Now, again, this is normal. Your emotional system is ramped up. Like I've said, your amygdala has been firing this whole time. And there's so much that you want to say to that person because you have this, it's like all of a sudden you remember

all of these things that you haven't said. So you talk to them like they're there because remember, your left brain is still trying to make the adjustment to the fact that that person is no longer present if that's the source of grief, and you talk to them. And again, that's also your brain dealing with it.

It's your brain's way of working through it in a sense. And in fact, if you don't engage, now it might not be talking, it just might be thinking. If you shut it all out completely, this is actually a problem. You know, the conversations you have, the thoughts you have as you work through your grief are perfectly normal. And that's your brain trying to come to terms with things. And your brain doesn't think quite the way that you or I do. So what it might be doing is it's literally just trying to carry on as everything is normal. And you have these conversations. Now, I want to emphasize this. Do not bottle up your emotions. It's okay to cry. It's perfectly normal in these situations. Bottling up your emotions is just going to delay it and it's going to impact you at some other time.

So you have to talk about it with people. You have to work through it. You know, I was lucky that I was surrounded by a massive family. I have more cousins than you can possibly imagine and they were all amazing. And I probably said the same thing over and over again. I know my friends back home, they probably all got the exact same phone call multiple times. But talking through it and sharing that emotion is normal. You need to let your amygdala calm down. You need to let it all out. Now, on that note, you may have trouble sleeping.

It's normal, but you want to try to sleep if you can. Because remember, I've said this countless times, if I've said the word amygdala too much, I've offered the life advice that sleep is the single biggest predictor of mental health. Well, it's true. If you can sleep, sleep. It'll help stabilize your emotions. So do what you have to to sleep. All right? It's perfectly fine. Do not oversleep. You can oversleep in these situations. You need to get out, breathe oxygen, and interact with the world. Now, throughout this, you're going to get waves of emotions, right? As time passes, I experienced you had longer stretches were always normal. And there's two things I'd say about that is one, you might feel a little bit guilty. You know, moving on with life is normal. And your brain's

trying to do this. I'm not saying this as some kind of counselor, but your brain is trying to move through the world. It doesn't want to park and stay in this one spot. Your brain has desires and drives, and it's trying to re-engage. So it's perfectly fine to move on with life. Okay, that's your brain just saying, hey, we got things to do. I need food. I need a place to sleep. We need money. All right. And that's your low level brain survival instincts kicking in. But these waves of emotions will come again, right? You know, you're going to get triggers. You might look at a picture.

You might look at something. You know, you might talk to someone and say something or they say something. You might hear something on a TV show. You know, just the other night I was watching a show and the episode, it was actually an episode of How I Met Your Mother. And one of the characters, Mother's dies in the episode. And that just set me off completely. And I'd seen the episode before, but I'd sort of totally forgotten about it. But, you know, just thinking about this guy's mother's dying made me think about my mother dying. So you get these waves of emotion.

And again, that's just a trigger. It's something that triggers the amygdala and it fires it up. Sadness is something that you experience with grief, right? And this is, again, perfectly normal. This is just your emotional system responding to the situation at hand. system responding to the situation at hand. The key with this is to accept it and live with it, but not live in it too long. It's okay to be emotional, right? Your brain expects a certain amount of that, but you have to accept it and move on. That right brain has to update your worldview. You have to get to a place where your new worldview is post this event. The event has happened. In this case, my mother has passed. All right. Do I still think about her?

Of course I do. Every day. Do I miss her? Yes. But my worldview is now adjusted to a world where my mother is not in it. All right. She is in some sense, but you get what I mean, not physically. And again, this is a part of the grieving process. Now, I hope you found that useful. I know I listened to the episode when I first talked about grief and I realized I was talking about this emotional experience where I hadn't really lived it myself. And now that I had, I wanted to go through an event with you and talk about what's going on in the brain while it's all happening. Hopefully, some of you find that useful and interesting. I promise for our next episode, because we are back on track, it will not be about the neuroscience of grief revisited yet again. It's going to be

something cool and amazing about the neuroscience of everyday life. Don't forget the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's links to Etsy. Some of you are still buying our merch. I know we're hopelessly behind on updating it to new stuff. You never know what might happen this year. There's links to Patreon. For those of you supporting us, thank you so much.

there's links to patreon for those of you supporting us thank you so much all the money that you give in support goes to matt who does all the sound production for the podcast and it's what keeps us on the air so thank you for that he's a starving graduate student every penny counts of course you can follow me on x and threads at that neuro side guy we're working our way through all the suggestions for this season. We were supposed to do that weeks ago, but as I've stated, my life got a bit weird. But we are going to process them and we're going to try to let you, we want to do episodes on what you want to know about the neuroscience of everyday life. If you have ideas, send them in, please, at thatneuroscienceguy on XR threads

or thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. And of course, the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening and supporting us. And if you haven't, please subscribe. My name's Olive Kregolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.