Dr. Alok 'Dr. K' Kanojia

Give me a second.

Thank you very much, Mods.

Okay, how can we have proper discourse when people are seeing this kind of situation from their own bubbles?

Okay, that looks like people are not asking questions related to anxiety, so we can still answer them.

Okay, there's a question about emotional processing.

I think that deserves a lecture.

When you mentioned the brain processes emotions, what does that mean?

Regulating hormonal levels.

Let's talk about this for just a second, and then this deserves its whole own lecture.

What does it mean to process an emotion?

So an emotion has a neurological component, right?

So emotion is activation of the emotional centers of the brain.

Now, when emotional centers in the brain activate, they communicate with other parts of the brain.

So what happens when we feel emotional is they go to our reticular activating formation, which is at the base of our skull, and the emotion says, hey, don't go to sleep.

We're in danger.

The emotion goes to the sympathetic chain ganglia, which is a set of cells along your spine, and turns those on and causes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, sweating, diaphoresis, things like that.

The emotion travels to your frontal lobes and says, hey, we got to focus on this.

Don't think about anything else.

Now, here's the key thing to remember.

about emotions and the brain in general.