Norman Swan

speaker

307 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 11 Aug

Norman Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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What's That Rash? · Why do we cry? · 11 Aug 2026 podcast

It's a very i what's interesting about crying, and and as you see, as we've got into this for this episode,

Is how little people have actually researched it?

It's an expression of your brain activity and it's influenced by all sorts of things.

Have you had a bad night's sleep?

Are you tired?

Are you stressed?

Are you feeling low?

Are you going through a period of poor physical health?

Are you drinking more than you otherwise would?

Are you using other recreational drugs?

All those things can affect uh your propensity to crying or not crying.

Short answer is nobody's absolutely sure what it is.

So there there are various parts of the unconscious, the autonomic nervous system that get involved.

There's the sympathetic nervous system, which tends to wind you up, you know, little narrow blood vessels.

Then there's the parasympathetic nervous system which does the opposite, gets blood flowing.

And some people argue that the initial part of crying is induced by the sympathetic nervous system, adrenaline, noradrenaline, and then you get the parasympathetic nervous system coming in and that's when you get this tearful response.

And perhaps feeling better.

Some people think that oxytocin is involved, which is has been called the the empathy hormone, and that gets involved in the process.

And you know, and there there's debate about the extent to how deep into the brain crying goes.

Does it ro go right down to the brainstem, which is involved in fundamental processes like breathing, your heart rate and so on?

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