Psychiatrist Dr. Jud Brewer on longing in the brain & how to curb our cravings through mindfulness

Episode 28  Psychiatrist and mindfulness research leader Dr. Jud Brewer explains the neural mechanisms of longing (i.e. romantic obsession) and the differences between excitement (contraction) and joy (expansion). Brewer discusses how mindfulness training reduces cravings and anxiety to help individuals manage their habits and emotions.

Jud Brewer MD PhD is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and professor in Behavioral and Social Sciences and Psychiatry at the Schools of Public Health & Medicine at Brown University. Brewer is an internationally known expert in mindfulness training for addictions. He has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change.  He has also studied the underlying neural mechanisms of mindfulness using standard and real-time fMRI and EEG neurofeedback. Brewer is a New York Times best-selling author of Unwinding Anxiety, The Craving Mind, and The Hunger Habit.  Learn more at https://drjud.com/

 
In this episode, (in order) we talked about:

*How longing activates the self-referential default mode network in the brain (especially the posterior cingulate cortex)

*The trigger-behavior-reward pattern (the explore/exploit survival mode), and how it relates to finding a romantic partner

*The difference between contracted excitement and expansive joy

*Intermittent reinforcement that keeps our brains on the hook of uncertainty

*Unconditional love (supportive, solid, connected) compared to infatuation (excitement, anticipatory)

*The link between the deactivation of the default mode network and experienced meditators

*Why curiosity (nonjudgement) is our superpower when it comes to breaking bad habits

*How negative prediction error leads to disenchantment with behavior

*Why worrying gives us a false sense of control 

*How mindfulness improves certain eating disorders

*Hedonic hunger (food associated with emotions)

Quotes

“Longing is a slow want.”

“The more obsessed somebody was with their partner, the more activated a particular region in this [default mode] network was.”

"Dopamine shifts from learning, ‘Oh, this is a good food source,’ to becoming this motivation molecule, which is often how it's described in the addiction field. It drives us to go do something once we've learned that it is something ‘desirable.’”

“A lot of coiling action happens when we're obsessing over somebody, or we're thinking how great the last date was, or we can't wait until the next date. There's that anticipation that coils and coils and coils. And it can be excessively coiled with things like instant messaging and texting, where we don't know when the next text is going to come. We don't know what it's going to say. There's a lot of uncertainty that gets our brain all wound up.”

“I think often people mistake excitement for happiness, because there's that 'I'm alive' quality of experience that comes with it.”

“Curiosity, first off, feels more expanded than contracted…Instead of being identified with [the obsessive thought] or caught up in worry, [people] can get curious and replace that unhelpful habit that leads to contraction with a helpful habit of being curious or even being kind to themselves if their habit was to judge themselves.”

"Just bringing awareness in and seeing that [worrying] is not very rewarding helps us become disenchanted with the behavior.”

“We don’t need to be meditating to be mindful. It’s about being in the present moment and being curious.”