Happy Wednesday, founders,

Neuroscience. What a sexy word.

It all kicked off back in January 1990, when President George H. W. Bush declared it the Decade of the Brain. Since then, neuroscience has evolved from a niche scientific pursuit into a cultural force. Research exploded, funding followed, and by the time social media arrived, the field was no longer confined to academic journals, it had become content.

You’ve seen the headlines:

“10 Ways to Dopamine Detox”

“This Is Why You’re an Adrenaline Junkie”

“How to Stop Cortisol from Spiking”

“You Just Have a Dysregulated Nervous System.”

We started explaining away our quirks, habits, and even our failures with one tidy line: “That’s just how my brain works.”

I’m no exception. I’ve binged pop-neuro content at 2AM, ordered brain-boosting supplements out of desperation, and convinced myself that just one more hack might finally sort my life out.

And while there’s always some truth in these frameworks, lately I’ve been questioning the deeper story:

Are we reducing our entire identity to brain chemistry?

When did emotion become data?

When did struggle become just synaptic wiring?

That’s when I came across the word that captured it all: Neuroessentialism - the increasingly popular view that your brain is the explanation for who you are.

It sounds scientific. It feels grounded. But it’s quietly narrowing how we see ourselves, our complexity, our humanity, and even our capacity to evolve.

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Neuroessentialism is the tendency to reduce complex psychological and social phenomena to brain activity. The mass spread of neuroscience media had subtly transformed identity: we’ve moved from saying “I feel sad” to “my serotonin levels are low.”

It’s not that these statements are wrong. But something deeper happens when we start to believe they are enough.

In the name of “understanding the brain,” we start to:

We love frameworks, optimizations, hacks. We want answers, control. But the moment we reduce ourselves to neurochemistry, we flatten the story.

As a journalist Steven Pooleb wrote: “The human brain, it is said, is the most complex object in the known universe. That a part of it “lights up” on an fMRI scan does not mean the rest is inactive; nor is it obvious what any such lighting-up indicates; nor is it straightforward to infer general lessons about life from experiments conducted under highly artificial conditions. Nor do we have the faintest clue about the biggest mystery of all – how does a lump of wet grey matter produce the conscious experience you are having right now, reading this paragraph? How come the brain gives rise to the mind? No one knows.

So, instead, here is a recipe for writing a hit popular brain book. You start each chapter with a pat anecdote about an individual’s professional or entrepreneurial success, or narrow escape from peril. You then mine the neuroscientific research for an apparently relevant specific result and narrate the experiment, perhaps interviewing the scientist involved and describing his hair. You then climax in a fit of premature extrapolation, inferring from the scientific result a calming bromide about what it is to function optimally as a modern human being. Voilà, a laboratory-sanctioned Big Idea in digestible narrative form. This is what the psychologist Christopher Chabris has named the “story-study-lesson” model, perhaps first perfected by one Malcolm Gladwell. A series of these threesomes may be packaged into a book, and then resold again and again as a stand-up act on the wonderfully lucrative corporate lecture circuit.”

A major reason neuroessentialist thinking became so popular is because it seemed helpful in making sense of our actions, especially in reducing stigma around mental health issues. In online spaces, this is often expressed through humorous or relatable content that frames anxiety, depression, or addiction as inevitable outcomes of “broken brains.” By saying things like “depression is just a chemical imbalance,” or “anxiety is a result of a dysregulated nervous system,” we’ve shifted blame away from the person and toward the brain. This type of framing can feel validating, especially for those who’ve carried years of guilt or shame.

But this explanation has a shadow side.

Yes, it may promote self-discovery, reduce self-blame, but even well-intentioned easily digestible media content, can encourage self-diagnosis and identity fusion with diagnostic labels, potentially discouraging holistic treatment approaches and psychosocial coping strategies. It also increases hopelessness.

Studies show that when people believe their brain is broken, they’re less likely to believe they can change. Neurobiological explanations can lower personal responsibility but often kill optimism about recovery. And when people over-identify with diagnoses, turning “ADHD” or “anxious” into fixed traits, it can actually worsen symptoms through self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even clinicians are affected. When therapists see disorders as purely brain-based, it can lower empathy, making treatment feel more distant or clinical less human.

But the brain is not a closed system. Such reductionist view challenges traditional notions of free will and moral responsibility, complicating the discourse on personal agency and ethical accountability.

It posits our identities and decisions are fundamentally rooted in our brain’s biological processes. While neuroscience has undeniably advanced our understanding of the brain’s role in thought and behaviour, this perspective reduces identity to neural activity, reinforcing a deterministic perspective that individuals are products of their neurobiology. When brain scans or neurotransmitters are presented as explanations for love, morality, addiction or criminality, they may be interpreted as evidence that our choices are not truly autonomous, but rather predetermined by our biology. If everything is “just my wiring,” then where’s the room for change? For evolution?

We are not just neurons.

We are stories, relationships, culture, trauma, memory.

We are meaning.

When we over-index on brain science without context, we miss how much of our ‘self’ is shaped by the invisible: upbringing, attachment, projection, energy, relational patterns. These aren’t visible on a scan, but they drive your every decision.

The solution isn’t to throw away neuroscience. I thoroughly love learning it. It’s powerful, fascinating, often life-changing.

But what we need is integration, not reduction.

Emotions are not just hardwired - they’re constructed. What fires in your brain depends on what you’ve lived, what you expect, and how safe you feel. That means you’re not at the mercy of your circuits. You’re at the edge of self-authorship.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home, or if you want to share the game you caught yourself playing.

Yours in conscious leadership,
Lavena

P.S. Check out more on what we do at Insane Media here. If you want to connect, stalk, or trauma dump, here’s where you can find me. If you want to get a founder feature about your own story, apply here. If you’d like to reach our newsletter audience (founders, creators, and marketers), click the button below.

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