Dr. Allan Schore: How Relationships Shape Your Brain

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Allan Schore, Ph.D., a faculty member in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, a longtime clinical psychotherapist, and a multi-book author. We discuss how early child-parent interactions shape brain circuitry, impacting our ability to form attachments, manage emotions, and navigate conflict and stress. We cover how the development of right-brain circuitry related to emotional processing and the unconscious mind regulates physiological responses, influencing adult friendships and romantic relationships. We also explore how improving your ability to listen to the emotional tone—rather than just the meaning—of words is a vital skill for fostering better relationships with yourself and others, and how it plays a role in reshaping brain circuitry.

Additionally, we explain how circuits in the right brain hemisphere drive creativity and intuition and discuss activities to access the unconscious mind. This episode delves into how the unconscious mind regulates emotions—both your own and others’—and shapes our sense of self. By the end, you’ll have new knowledge and tools to build more secure, meaningful, and impactful connections of all kinds: professional, romantic, familial, friendships, and beyond.

Articles

• The right brain hemisphere is dominant in human infants. (Brain)
• Incomplete Healing as a Cause of Aging: The Role of Mitochondria and the Cell Danger Response (Biology)
• Reliability for music-induced heart rate synchronization (Scientific Reports)
• Hemispherically lateralized rhythmic oscillations in the cingulate-amygdala circuit drive affective empathy in mice (Neuron)
• The Long-Lasting Effects of Family and Childhood on Adult Wellbeing: Evidence from British Cohort Data (CEP Discussion Papers)

Books

• Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self
• Descartes' Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
• Right Brain Psychotherapy
• The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
• The Development of the Unconscious Mind

Other Resources

• The State of the World’s Children 2021 (UNICEF)

Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned

• Strange Situation Task (timestamp)
• The Science of MDMA & Its Therapeutic Uses: Benefits & Risks
• Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: How to Understand Emotions

People Mentioned

• John Bowlby: British developmental psychologist, psychiatrist
• Erik Erickson: American child psychoanalyst
• Sigmund Freud: Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis
• Donald Winnicott: English pediatrician and psychoanalyst
• Stephen Porges: scientist, Indiana University; polyvagal theory
• Ian McGilchrist: British psychiatrist, philosopher
• Emanuel Hammer: American psychologist, author
• Jonathan Haidt: psychologist, New York University School of Business