Dr. Allan Schore: Clinician, psychoanalyst, and faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCLA. A world expert on regulation theory and how early childhood attachment shapes the developing brain, and author of foundational books including Right Brain Psychotherapy.
What this episode covers
Andrew Huberman and Dr. Allan Schore explore how the right brain develops first and dominates during the human brain growth spurt from the last trimester of pregnancy through the first two to three years of life. Schore lays out his regulation theory: attachment is fundamentally psychobiological attunement between caregiver and infant, conducted right brain to right brain through face, voice, and gesture, and it establishes our lifelong strategies for emotional self-regulation. The conversation traces how secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized attachment styles form, how the same circuitry is repurposed for adult romantic and other relationships, and how it can be repaired in therapy through synchrony and heightened affective moments. They also discuss the distinct roles of mothers and fathers, music and dogs as affect regulators, the harms of text-based communication, and why early-life emotional support deserves more societal investment.
The guest's own work
Right Brain Psychotherapy
Allan Schore
“he is also the author of several important books including right brain Psychotherapy and development of the unconscious mind”— Allan Schore
The Development of the Unconscious Mind
Allan Schore
“get the development of the unconscious mind also okay we'll do”— Andrew Huberman
Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development
Allan Schore
“I be I began this in 1994 with my first book a regulation and the origin of the self the neurobiology of emotional development”— Allan Schore
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
The Master and His Emissary
Iain McGilchrist
“the title of his book is the master and his Emissary and the Emissary which is the left brain betrays the master”— Allan Schore
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt
“Jonathan hate and the author of The anxious generation has has been encouraging young kids to put away their phones”— Andrew Huberman
Big reveals from this episode
- Schore claims 90 to 95 percent of our basic motivations are unconscious, and equates the right brain with the unconscious mind.
- States everything about attachment occurs in the first 24 months, during right-hemisphere dominance, before the left brain's growth spurt.
- Argues the exact same circuitry used for infant-mother attachment is repurposed for adult romantic relationships, not a separate system.
- Says a therapist must 'surrender' to shift from left to right brain; you cannot consciously force it.
- Claims you can repair right-brain circuitry without a therapist by finding people you can be close, open, and vulnerable with.
- Reveals the brain can switch hemispheres in about 100 milliseconds, and you can only be in one hemisphere at a time.
- Notes most US parents return to work at six weeks, the very start of the autonomic nervous system's critical period.
- Cites a 2021 UNICEF poll of 36 rich countries in which the US came in last in childhood emotional well-being.
Worth remembering
- Six major neuroscience studies show the right hemisphere is dominant from the last trimester through the third year of life.
- Brain development alternates: right hemisphere first, then left, cycling back and forth across the lifespan, including another spurt at adolescence.
- The right orbitofrontal cortex regulates the amygdala and houses the most sophisticated, latest-evolving parts of the brain.
- Secure attachment depends not just on attunement but on repair of inevitable misattunements between caregiver and baby.
- Early memories formed in utero are stored in the right amygdala, with lateralization visible even in the fetus.
- Hyperscanning neuroimaging shows two people's right temporoparietal junctions synchronize during emotional, face-to-face interaction.
- Psychotherapy is shown to produce longer-lasting changes than CBT, including after treatment ends.
- Other rich countries offer roughly three months paternal and six-plus months maternal leave, recognizing this period as critical.
- A London School of Economics study found emotion was the best childhood predictor of adult life satisfaction, with IQ ranking last behind conduct.
- Repression is the left hemisphere shutting out everything coming over from the right; it can be adaptive or maladaptive.