Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a preeminent neuroscientist whose revolutionary research has fundamentally reshaped understanding of human emotion and cognition. She currently serves as University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University with research appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she directs the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory to investigate how the brain constructs emotional experiences. Holding a PhD from the University of Waterloo and undergraduate degrees from the University of Toronto in psychology with minors in linguistics and anthropology, she established her career trajectory after completing her clinical psychology training at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Barrett has held prestigious academic positions including Professor of Psychology at Boston College and Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School before joining Northeastern University in 2010, where she has pioneered groundbreaking research that integrates neuroscience, psychology, and multiple other disciplines.
Her seminal theory of constructed emotion challenges centuries of scientific assumptions by proposing that emotions are not universal, hardwired responses but rather constructed in the moment by the brain based on bodily sensations, cultural context, and past experiences. This paradigm-shifting framework has garnered global recognition with Dr. Barrett ranking among the top 0.1% most cited scientists worldwide, with over 275 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including Science and Nature Neuroscience. Her research has demonstrated through rigorous empirical evidence that emotional categories like fear, anger, and happiness are not biologically distinct phenomena but emerge from the brain's predictive processes that constantly regulate the body's internal state. This work has profound implications across numerous fields, transforming approaches to psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, law, and mental health treatment.
Beyond her research contributions, Dr. Barrett serves as Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and has testified before the US Congress on the neuroscience of emotion. She has received numerous accolades including the prestigious NIH Director's Pioneer Award for transformative research, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Mentor Award in 2018, of which she served as president from 2019 to 2020. An elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada, she actively engages in science communication through bestselling books such as How Emotions Are Made and numerous public lectures. Currently leading a multidisciplinary research team of approximately 25 scientists across Northeastern University and Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Barrett continues to advance her systems-level model of affective science while exploring new frontiers in understanding how the brain creates the human experience.
