Does the Body Really Keep the Score?A Therapist's Response to the 2026 Friston Paper on Trauma
Talking Past Each Other: Understanding Trauma and the Body
A few weeks ago, a provocative paper appeared in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. Its full title was "The body does not keep the score: trauma, predictive coding, and the restoration of metastability." This title directly challenges Bessel van der Kolk's influential book, The Body Keeps the Score, which has shaped our understanding of trauma for over a decade.
I no longer spend my days buried in research articles, so I discovered this paper like many others—through social media. However, I felt compelled to dig deeper. I read it, then read it again. My initial frustration settled, only to rise again. This frustration wasn't about the science itself. Instead, it stemmed from the paper's misinterpretation of trauma as a physical substance trapped in our bodies, rather than addressing the deeper reality of the argument.
What Van der Kolk Actually Said About Trauma and the Body
Van der Kolk never claimed that trauma is stored in the fascia. What he argues is much more nuanced. Trauma alters the autonomic nervous system, rewiring how our survival brain takes over from our thinking brain when triggered. The body becomes part of a dysregulated loop, not a vault or archive, but a system that has lost its ability to return to balance.
The authors of the paper are well aware of this. One of them, Karl Friston, is among the most cited neuroscientists today. They even acknowledge, in the middle of the paper, that van der Kolk engages directly with brain science. He explores the interrelationship between the thinking brain and the emotional brain, how we sense what's happening in our bodies, and the nervous system's role in shaping our emotional experiences. So, why the title? Why frame the disagreement as "storage versus prediction" when, upon closer examination, the disagreement has nothing to do with storage at all?
Why the Pop-Science Headline Does Damage
This is where the pop-science instinct does harm. A catchy title designed to go viral gets clipped, shared, and screenshotted by people who have neither read the book nor the article. Within hours of publication, social media posts began declaring that science had "debunked" van der Kolk. To be clear, that's not what the paper says, but it is what the headline implies. Headlines travel further than nuance, and this can lead to misunderstanding.
Two Frameworks, One Conclusion
Reflecting on both texts, I'm left with a clear understanding. The two frameworks reach the same conclusion through different paths. Kotler and colleagues argue that trauma is a disorder of prediction. The brain locks into hypervigilance, constantly anticipating threats based on past experiences. It interprets ordinary sensations as proof of ongoing danger.
Van der Kolk asserts that trauma dysregulates the nervous system. The survival brain overrides rational thought, making top-down thinking impossible during moments of activation.
Both perspectives convey the same message using different vocabularies. They both emphasize that you cannot talk a frightened nervous system out of its fear. Healing requires a bottom-up approach—working through the body rather than just the thinking mind. This includes somatic practices, relational experiences, and experiential methods. Activities like yoga, EMDR, breathwork, walking, cold water immersion, drumming, and movement introduce new sensory data to a brain that has stopped trusting its own predictions. We can call it "updating priors" or "discharging arousal," but the mechanism remains the same.
Restoring Flexibility: What the Paper Gets Right
One of the most valuable insights from the paper is the idea that a healthy nervous system can fluidly switch between states. Trauma occurs when that flexibility collapses. The researchers refer to this concept as metastability. This is crucial to remember because it encapsulates something I frequently observe in the men I work with—the rigidity, the narrow band of tolerable feelings, and the inability to soften without feeling overwhelmed. Restoring flexibility is, I believe, the essential work.
Where the paper expands on van der Kolk's ideas—and where it adds real value—is in its discussion of flow states. These are moments of deep absorption when we lose track of time and self. The argument that activities producing this kind of absorption—like surfing, hiking, music, or art—may restore flexibility not by releasing what is stored, but by providing the nervous system with new evidence that arousal and safety can coexist, is a useful idea. It's also what I witness when a man stands in cold water for the first time and laughs.
Why Framing Matters in Trauma Recovery
So, why have I taken the time to write this? Because how we frame trauma matters. The authors of the paper had an opportunity to say: van der Kolk accurately identified the symptoms. Here is a more precise account of the mechanism. Here is where our frameworks intersect, and here is what changes in practice. Instead, they led with a headline that pits one approach against another, allowing social media to amplify the misunderstanding.
Men who walk into therapy carrying decades of unprocessed weight don't need another debate about whether the body or the brain is in charge. They need both. They deserve to be met by someone who understands how the brain predicts and updates its sense of safety, along with a practice that meets the body where it is. The argument that one aspect matters more than the other has never served a single client.
What do you think? How do you respond to the headline?
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