NEW YORK, NY — Most people assume they experience the world as it really is. A new article published on the Patreon platform Dr. Farrell Unplugged makes the case that they've never experienced it that way at all and that understanding could change how they relate to fear, stress, chronic pain, and the constant sense of doom that defines modern life for so many people. Also, it's part of our evolutionary past as well as our childhoods. The piece, titled " Reality Isn't What You Think: How Your Brain Builds Everything You Feel and Believe, " draws on current neuroscience research to show that the brain doesn't passively record experience. It constructs it —assembling feelings, beliefs, and perceptions from a blend of past learning, bodily signals, and a built-in bias toward threat that was useful on the savanna and exhausting in the age of smartphones. The article covers the landmark research linking uncertainty to physical pain, the evolutionary roots of ne...
