tonight's talk which is going to be on adapting to the new normal, the new world as it

unfolds, developing ways to process what's going on.

So, let's just start.

The brain is, especially the left brain, is very reliant on the capability of representing life

in sequential plans and otherwise known as positive expectations of what will happen, a sense of a reliability

that our world is predictable.

When we can make plans, when we have a sense of how things will unfold in the future,

we can use what's called the default mode network of the brain, the midline regions.

We can make plans visualize futures we can feel reward and the

default mode network of the brain doesn't trigger needlessly the amygdala which essentially

activate stress, cortisol, and so forth. Fear center of the brain, the amygdala, or at least the amplifies fear,

impulses. When we can make plans for the future, we can engage the frontal cortex to inhibit what's called sub-cortical

impulses which otherwise are known as fight, freeze, impulses.

But of course, right now, our ability

to confidently know how the future will unfold for most of us I think the vast majority of us has been

compromised really nobody knows how this will play out nobody knows whether this will play out.

Nobody knows whether this will be a matter of,

if a treatment that allows a sense of greater security

for those who are immune compromised or just including pretty

much everyone will be safe going back to a world where we connect and live in proximity with each other.

But even if a treatment or a vaccine magically arrived very quickly, which by all counts it doesn't look like that's the case.

Life is not going to go back to the way it was as if this never happened.

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