Daniel Levitin: How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed
Daniel Levitin: Comment rester calme quand vous prévoyez être stressé.
Daniel Levitin incorporates findings from neuroscience into everyday life. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
I broke into my own house.
je suis entré chez-moi par effraction.
in the dead of Montreal winter,
au milieu de l'hiver Montréalais.
Jeff, across town,
à l’autre bout de la ville
read minus 40 degrees --
-40°
if that's Celsius or Fahrenheit,
ça n’a pas d’importance
se rencontrent
fumbling in my pockets,
mes clés.
through the window,
par la fenêtre
where I had left them.
où je les avais laissées.
and tried all the other doors and windows,
sonder les autres portes et fenêtre,
at least I had my cellphone,
— J’avais mon téléphone —,
for a locksmith to show up,
j’aurais pu attendre longtemps,
Jeff's house for the night
to Europe the next morning,
tôt le lendemain pour l’Europe,
my passport and my suitcase.
et ma valise.
— gelé et désespéré —
through the basement window,
brisé une fenêtre de sous-sol
and taped it up over the opening,
pour boucher l’ouverture,
on the way to the airport,
le chemin de l’aéroport;
and ask him to fix it.
pour le faire réparer.
than a middle-of-the-night locksmith,
serrurier la nuit,
I was coming out even.
ça allait s’équilibrer
about how the brain performs under stress.
en état de stress.
that raises your heart rate,
le rythme cardiaque,
d’adrénaline
peu dormi,
that I had to call my contractor,
appeler l’ouvrier,
en Europe,
the cortisol in my brain,
dans mon cerveau,
because my thinking was cloudy.
étaient embrouillées.
to the airport check-in counter,
l’aéroport
je n’avais pas mon passeport.
and ice, 40 minutes,
40 minutes
raced back to the airport,
retourné à l’aéroport
my seat to someone else,
à quelqu’un d’autre,
next to the bathrooms,
près des toilettes, dans un siège
on an eight-hour flight.
sur un vol de 8 heures.
during those eight hours and no sleep.
Ça laisse beaucoup de temps pour réfléchir.
are there things that I can do,
je peux faire,
systèmes
from happening?
mauvaises choses d’arriver?
choses arrivent
of it being a total catastrophe.
until about a month later.
au bout d’un mois.
Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner,
le prix Nobel Danny Kahneman,
about having broken my window,
de fenêtre
something called prospective hindsight.
rétro-prospective
from the psychologist Gary Klein,
psychologue Gary Klein,
a few years before,
quelques années
— pré-mortem —
— post-mortem —
to figure out what went wrong, right?
trouver ce qui à pu mal aller.
qu’en pré-mortem
all the things that could go wrong,
qui peut mal aller,
what you can do
que vous pouvez faire
or to minimize the damage.
ou pour minimiser les conséquences.
in the form of a pre-mortem.
un pré-mortem.
some of them are not so obvious.
moins évidentes.
plus évidentes.
for things that are easily lost.
pour les choses qu’on perd aisément.
like common sense, and it is,
et ce l’est,
to back this up,
scientifiques,
spatiale.
called the hippocampus,
appelée hippocampe
of thousands of years,
dizaines de milliers d’années
of important things --
choses importantes
where fish can be found,
où peut-on trouver du poisson
becomes enlarged.
de taxi londoniens.
that allows squirrels to find their nuts.
de trouver leurs noix.
somebody actually did the experiment
l’expérience où
the olfactory sense of the squirrels,
sens olfactif des écureuils,
leurs noix.
they were using the hippocampus,
utilisaient l’hippocampe,
in the brain for finding things.
trouver les choses.
that don't move around much,
pas beaucoup,
and reading glasses and passports.
nos lunettes et nos passeports.
designate a spot for your keys --
maybe a decorative bowl.
spécifique.
a particular table.
and you're scrupulous about it,
cette stratégie;
when you look for them.
quand vous en aurez besoin.
of your credit cards,
avec votre téléphone,
(dans le nuage).
you can facilitate replacement.
il sera plus facile de les remplacer.
the brain releases cortisol.
produit du cortisol.
and it causes cloudy thinking.
embrouille la pensée.
you're not going to be at your best,
vous ne serez pas à votre meilleur,
un système.
no more stressful a situation
stressantes
with a medical decision to make.
une décision médicale.
are going to be in that position,
à une telle situation
a very important decision
décision importante
or that of a loved one,
de celle d’un proche,
semblable.
a very particular medical condition.
médicale particulière.
of medical decision-making,
médicales
and social decision-making --
financières ou sociales
assessment of the facts.
rationnelle des faits.
and the doctor says,
médecin et qu’il déclare :
your cholesterol's a little high."
votre cholestérol est un peu élevé.»
taux de cholestérol
of cardiovascular disease,
cardiovasculaire,
d’infarctus.
isn't the best thing,
"You know, I'd like to give you a drug
un médicament
lower your cholesterol, a statin."
cholestérol; une statine »
parler de statines,
the most widely prescribed drugs
les plus prescrits
people who take them.
qui en prennent.
"Yeah! Give me the statin."
« Oui donnez-moi des statines ».
you should ask at this point,
poser une question,
don't like talking about,
n'aiment pas parler
like talking about even less.
pharmaceutiques.
— Nombre de sujets à traiter —
— le NST — ?
that need to take a drug
doivent être traitées
or any medical procedure
bénéficie du traitement.
what kind of crazy statistic is that?
« Quelle statistique bizarre ! »
something to me
quelquechose
doesn't work that way.
fonctionne pas comme ça.
du docteur
it's the fault of scientists like me.
scientifiques comme moi.
the underlying mechanisms well enough.
fonctionnement assez bien.
estime que
in only 30 to 50 percent of the people.
30 à 50% des gens.
for the most widely prescribed statin,
qu’il faut traiter avec des statines
before one person is helped?
Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband,
take the drug for a year
le médicament pendant un an
or other adverse event is prevented.
soit évité.
of lowering my cholesterol.
mon cholestérol;
the prescription anyway."
Donnez-moi la prescription.
for another statistic,
autre statistique.
about the side effects." Right?
in five percent of the patients.
5% des patients.
gastrointestinal distress --
articulaires, malaises gastro-intestinaux
5%
it's going to happen to me,
le médicament.
you're not thinking clearly.
sous le stress.
to work through this ahead of time,
avant
the chain of reasoning on the spot.
la réflexion sur place.
One person's helped,
sur 300
have side effects,
effets secondaires.
to be harmed by the drug
de vous nuire
should take the statin or not.
this conversation with your doctor.
votre médecin.
of informed consent.
« consentement éclairé ».
to this kind of information
ce genre d’information
you want to take the risks or not.
voulez prendre le risque.
out of the air for shock value,
pour vous impressionner,
this number needed to treat.
ce nombre de sujets à traiter.
on men over the age of 50,
les hommes de plus de 50 ans,
au cancer —
for every one person who's helped.
pour aider une personne.
occur in 50 percent of the patients.
50% des patients.
erectile dysfunction,
la dysfonction érectile,
le déchirement rectal,
of the 50 percent who has these,
Si vous êtes chanceux ces effets
un an ou deux.
is to think ahead of time
des réfléchir avant
that you might be able to ask
pourrez poser
all of this on the spot.
inventer sur le champ.
about things like quality of life.
la qualité de vie.
that's pain-free,
sans douleur,
a great deal of pain towards the end?
avec des souffrances à la fin ?
and think about now,
réfléchir maintenant
in the heat of the moment,
dans le feu de l’action,
with this kind of thinking.
genre de réflexion.
releases cortisol,
en condition de stress;
that happens at that moment
de plusieurs systèmes.
you don't need your digestive system,
besoin de système digestif,
ou de système immunitaire,
metabolism on those things
l’énergie là dessus
rapidement,
and then none of those things matter.
during those times of stress
en situation de stress
et rationnel,
and his colleagues have shown.
et ses collègues.
to think ahead
penser à l’avance
is recognizing that all of us are flawed.
sommes tous faillibles.
erreurs de temps en temps.
to what those failures might be,
pouvons faillir et ainsi
that will help minimize the damage,
aidera à minimiser les conséquences,
from happening in the first place.
snowy night in Montreal,
à Montréal;
a combination lock next to the door,
à combinaison près de la porte,
an easy to remember combination.
et j’y mets une clé de la porte.
that haven't been sorted,
n’ai pas encore trié
that I haven't gone through.
non lus.
bien organisé,
as a gradual process,
en marche,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Daniel Levitin - NeuroscientistDaniel Levitin incorporates findings from neuroscience into everyday life.
Why you should listen
Dr. Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, dean at Minerva Schools in San Francisco and a musician. His research focuses on pattern processing in the brain.
His three books This Is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs, and the recent The Organized Mind are all bestsellers. A polymath at heart, he has performed with top musicians and holds a few gold and platinum records.
Levitin earned his B.A. in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science at Stanford University, and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Oregon, researching complex auditory patterns and pattern processing in expert and non-expert populations. He completed post-doctoral training at Stanford University Medical School (in Neuroimaging) and at UC Berkeley (in Cognitive Psychology). He has consulted on audio sound source separation for the U.S. Navy, and on audio quality for several rock bands and record labels (including the Grateful Dead and Steely Dan), and served as one of the “Golden Ears” expert listeners in the original Dolby AC3 compression tests. He worked for two years at the Silicon Valley think tank Interval Research Corporation.
He taught at Stanford University in the Department of Computer Science, the Program in Human-Computer Interaction, and the Departments of Psychology, Anthropology, Computer Music, and History of Science.
Daniel Levitin | Speaker | TED.com