Our physiological response to emotions apparently lasts just a minute and a half. But there’s an embarrassing episode from 2009 that still makes me sweat Our physiological response to emotions apparently lasts just a minute and a half. But there’s an embarrassing episode from 2009 that still makes me sweat I ’ve just discovered the “90-second rule”, a concept neuroanatomist Dr Jill Bolte Taylor explored in her book, Whole Brain Living, back in 2021. That’s how long our physiological response to