Do You Know About Temporal Dependance?

It is why the Neuro Informed shift is critical for leadership.

RICK GRIFFIN NOV 11, 2025

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Welcome back to Science Shorts, my ongoing effort to make brain science simple, human, and just nerdy enough to keep you curious. This is the third post in our series digging into

the foundational research behind the Neuro-Informed movement. The work comes from the fabulous Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and her collaborator, Dr. J. Benjamin Hutchinson.

As a quick reminder, last month’s blog: ‘Taking on One of Psychology’s Sacred Cows’ explored the idea of Prediction over Reaction. We talked about how your brain is constantly forecasting what’s about to happen and shaping what you see, feel, and do before life even shows up.

This month we’re talking about the sequel to that idea: Moments Are Connected. Every thought, every emotion, every decision is tied to the one that came before it. Your brain isn’t reacting to isolated events. It’s running a movie with no scene breaks.

Let me give you a real-world example.

I managed to burn my toast in a computerized toaster. It was an easy error to make. I accidentally set the timer at three minutes instead of thirty seconds. And the toast was toast! It wasn’t the small ‘just scrape it off’ kind of burn. It was the black, smoking, set-off- the-alarm kind of burn. I wish I could say I laughed it off, but no. My body immediately declared a Code Red. My heart sped up, my shoulders tensed, and before I knew it, I was snappy with the refrigerator for not keeping my O.J. colder.

Sound familiar? That’s not about the toast. That’s your predictive brain doing its thing. Once the first surprise hit, my brain started forecasting trouble. It didn’t wait for a new event. It carried that energy into the next moment, coloring how I felt, what I noticed, and how I acted.

Barrett and Hutchinson describe this process as temporal dependence. Which is just nerdy talk for the idea that moments in your mind aren’t independent. Every experience shapes the next one. The brain stitches your life together into a continuous stream of predictions, and it does this to keep you stable and efficient. It’s trying to make sense of what’s happening now by leaning on what just happened.

Think of it like driving with your GPS in “predictive” mode. When you make one wrong turn, it recalculates. But it doesn’t recalculate from scratch. It builds the new route from the one you were already on. Your brain does the same thing. It’s recalculating every moment,

adjusting your emotions, body responses, and attention based on its best guess of what’s coming next.

Now, here’s where this matters in real life, especially for those of us who lead, teach, or serve others. If every moment builds on the last, then your mood, your tone, even your posture are part of someone else’s next prediction loop. Do you see where I am going with this? The energy you bring into a meeting or a conversation doesn’t stop with you. It sets the conditions for what the other person’s brain expects to happen next. You’re not just managing people; you’re managing context.

That’s the Neuro-Informed shift. We stop treating behavior as a reaction to single events and start seeing it as a continuous stream of predictions in motion. If you want people to think differently, feel differently, or act differently, you don’t just correct the moment. You have to help them build new predictions for the next one.

So, back to the toast. Once I noticed my brain was still forecasting frustration, I had a choice: update the model or let it run the show. I grabbed a fresh slice of bread, took a breath, and told my brain, “Hey, new data: we’re fine.” My body started to calm down, and my morning got back on track.

That’s the power of noticing that moments are connected. You can’t change the burnt toast, but you can change what your brain predicts next.

Change happens when we help the brain expect something different next time.

This is what Barrett and Hutchinson were getting at with the idea that moments are connected. The brain does not reset between situations. It carries yesterday’s expectations into today, and this moment into the next one. So, when we guide someone to build a new prediction, we are not just helping them handle what is happening right now. We are shaping what happens next. That is the Neuro Informed shift. Not reacting to the past. Preparing the brain for a better future.

Next month, we’ll take this one layer deeper with Energy Is the Boss. This is how your brain manages its internal budget, why learning has a literal energy cost, and why every

prediction error comes with a metabolic price tag. Spoiler: your body’s CFO is working overtime.

Until then, pay attention to how one moment rolls into the next. The story your brain’s been telling might just need a new plot twist.