The Research that Rewrites the Rules

The short paper that made me rethink…well, everything!

SEP 22, 2025

Here we go! My first Science Short since launching Neuro Notes. This series is where I’ll share my take on the scientific literature that fuels the Neuro-Informed movement. Think of it as me sharing the “wow, that changes everything” ideas that keep me up at night.

And what better place to start than with the article that lit my fire? It comes from none other than my long-standing neuroscience crush, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. Yes, Dr. J. Benjamin Hutchinson co-authored it, and I’m grateful for his brilliance, but if you know me at all, you know this is an LFB spotlight.

Now, if you want a crisp summary of the paper, ChatGPT could crank that out faster and probably cleaner than I ever could. This isn’t a recap. This is me pointing to a piece of science so packed with Neuro-Informed nuggets that I can’t help but share it.

Here’s the plan. I’m not turning this into a training. No firehose of detail. No TLDR in the comments, please. Instead, I’m writing a series. Short posts. Easy to read while you sip your Starbucks, but enough to make you rethink how you interact with others.

This first one? It’s the 30,000-foot view. Big picture. Why this paper matters at all.

Alt text: neuroscience leadership certification

This research isn’t just a clever tweak to old ideas. It’s a full-scale upgrade of how we think about brains. For years, psychology leaned on a cute little stimulus–response story: something happens, you react. LFB and Hutchinson argue that the brain works nothing like that. Their claims are what drive the momentum behind Neuro-Informed thinking. Here are the articles key points:

• Prediction over reaction – The brain runs a nonstop internal model, forecasting what’s next and shaping perception, memory, and action in real time.
• Moments are connected – Mental events are temporally Each thought or feeling reflects the predictions made just before it, not an isolated trigger.
• Energy is the boss – Through allostasis, the brain anticipates and balances the body’s energy needs. Learning itself carries a metabolic cost, so prediction errors have a price tag.
• Affect everywhere – Emotion and interoception aren’t special They infuse every decision and perception, whether we notice or not.
• Modes, not boxes – “Rational vs. emotional” or “automatic vs. controlled” are simply different modes of the same predictive system toggling between making predictions and correcting them.

These are the big ideas I’ll unpack in the next few posts. We will connect the dots between the science and the Neuro-Informed movement we are building together. We’ll explore how this research flips our old thinking on its head and shows why understanding the brain’s predictions and energy management changes the way we lead, teach, and care.

I’m not saying this article is the final word on Neuro-Informed practice. Far from it. But it is Lisa Feldman Barrett, and that earns a little extra attention from me. And just look at the bibliography, it’s almost as long as the article itself. That’s a sure sign that a mountain of research supports this theory. So strap up! There’s plenty more coming in Science Shorts for those who love to “get down and nerdy!”

So read the article. Make your own inferences about how it shapes your leadership, your teaching, your conversations. Then let’s keep learning. This is just the first stop on a much bigger Neuro-Informed journey.

Good News for Fellow Neuroscience Nerds

This article is fully open access, so you can read the whole thing without jumping through paywall hoops. Just head to the PubMed Central archive and grab the free PDF

here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721419831992. That link takes you straight to the government-funded version of The Power of Predictions: An Emerging Paradigm for Psychological Research, where you can download the complete paper and, yes, the super long bibliography!

I’d love to hear what you think after you read the article or even just this email. Sharing your reflections isn’t just good for conversation, it’s good for your brain. When you put thoughts into words, you fire and re-fire those treasured neural networks. So drop a comment, send a message, or start a chat. Your feedback helps shape this Neuro-Informed community and keeps all of our prediction engines learning.