Why do people walk away from bad events with different outcomes?

What enables some people to keep going when everything falls apart? We all know someone who’s been through hell and comes out standing. This episode is about resilience. Join Eagleman with guest Dr. Jonathan Downar to discover what happens in the brain when we face adversity. Is resilience something you’re born with, or is it something your brain can develop? What does any of this have to do with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, using magnetic fields to zap the brain, the less famous partner to the reward system, or what seemingly unrelated disorders in psychiatry all have in common?

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More Information:

Milano BA, Palm S, Burke MJ, Drew W, Kletenik I, Pines A, Corbetta M, Grafman J, Downar J, Siddiqi SH. Lesion network localization of functional and somatic symptoms. medRxiv. 2025:2025-03.

Goodkind M, Eickhoff SB, Oathes DJ, Jiang Y, Chang A, Jones-Hagata LB, Ortega BN, Zaiko YV, Roach EL, Korgaonkar MS, Grieve SM. Identification of a common neurobiological substrate for mental illness. JAMA psychiatry. 2015 Apr 1;72(4):305-15.

Taylor JJ, Lin C, Talmasov D, Ferguson MA, Schaper FL, Jiang J, Goodkind M, Grafman J, Etkin A, Siddiqi SH, Fox MD. A transdiagnostic network for psychiatric illness derived from atrophy and lesions. Nature human behaviour. 2023 Mar;7(3):420-9.

Brosch K, Stein F, Meller T, Schmitt S, Yuksel D, Ringwald KG, Pfarr JK, Waltemate L, Lemke H, Opel N, Meinert S. DLPFC volume is a neural correlate of resilience in healthy high-risk individuals with both childhood maltreatment and familial risk for depression. Psychological medicine. 2022 Dec;52(16):4139-45.

Eagleman DM, Downar J. Brain and behavior: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Oxford University Press. 2016.

Suomi SJ. Risk, resilience, and gene× environment interactions in rhesus monkeys. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2006 Dec;1094(1):52-62.

Eagleman DM. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Pantheon. 2011.

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