Essentials: Understanding & Controlling Aggression

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are discussing aggression. I'm going to explain to you that there are several different types of aggression. For instance, reactive aggression versus proactive aggression, meaning sometimes people will be aggressive because they feel threatened or they are protecting those that they love who also feel threatened. There's also proactive aggression where people go out of their way to deliberately try and harm others. And there is indirect aggression, which is aggression not involving physical violence. For instance, shaming people and things of that sort. It turns out that there are different biological mechanisms underlying each of the different types of aggression. And today, I will define those for you. I'll talk about the neural circuits in the brain and body that mediate each of the different kinds of aggression, talk about some of the hormones and peptides and neurotransmitters involved. I promise to make it all accessible to you even if you do not have any biology or science background. I'm certain that by the end of the episode, you will come away with a much more thorough understanding of what this thing that we call aggression really is. And when you see it in other people, I think it will make more sense to you. And when you observe it in yourself or the impulse to engage in aggression, verbal or physical or otherwise, I hope that you'll understand it better as well. And, of course, the tools that I will describe should allow you to modulate and control aggressive tendencies or predispositions to aggressiveness, and just generally be able to engage with people in a more adaptive way overall. The context of aggression really matters. So there are instances where aggression is adaptive, for instance, a mother protecting her children. Of course, other forms of aggression like unprovoked proactive aggression, somebody simply being violent to somebody else even when unprovoked. Most of us cringe when we see that kind of behavior. It can even evoke aggression in people when they observe that kind of behavior. Many of you have probably heard the statement that I believe arises from pop psychology, not from formal academic psychology, that aggression is just sadness. It's a form of sadness that's amplified and it shows up as aggression. But when we look at the underlying biology and the peer reviewed literature on this, nothing could be further from the truth. We have distinct circuits in the brain for aggression versus grief and mourning. Those are non overlapping. Now that doesn't mean that you can't be sad and aggressive or in a state of mourning and aggressive at the same time. But the idea that sadness and aggression are one in the same thing is simply not true. And …