Neuroscience and holidays

Who are you for the year-end festivities? Is it the person who starts arranging the decorations in November, or the person who leaves everything to the last second and encounters queues behind the gifts and preparations?

This may be the most anticipated time of the year, filled with meaning, sparkle and Christmas magic, and for some it may be the end of another 365-day period. Whatever your Christmas profile, the brain of each of us can trigger a series of events and influence how we interpret this season.

Dopamine, oxytocin, and cortisol can be released in the body by talking about or viewing items that remind us of Christmas. and according to a 2015 study, even a kind of “Christmas spirit” can be mapped in the brain. Grab your Christmas decorations and let’s celebrate the lights turning on in your somatosensory cortex!

Jingle Bell Cortical

A quick search of the scientific literature describing interesting facts about Christmas can reveal a variety of information, such as the changes the brain undergoes during this holiday season.

There is less happy information, too, such as the increase in drinking mushroom accidents, but let’s suppress the sadness and just focus on the hormonal celebration taking place in the body.

Bryan T. Haddock in 2015 He was interested in how the brains of people with migraine worked and how they were affected.. But in a burst of good Christmas humour, he decided to put a little aside on his research.

He and his team performed MRI scans on 20 participants to test their reactions to images of Christmas. 10 of these volunteers had Christmas traditions, while the other half had no particular excitement for this date.

The resulting images showed a common pattern of activation among participants who maintained the traditions. The most active brain regions were the sensory motor cortex, premotor cortex, primary motor cortex, and parietal lobe.

For those with no interests or Christmas traditions, activation occurred only in the region associated with image processing, the occipital lobe of the brain.

Freely, Haddock and his team concluded that they found the “Christmas spirit” in the human brain. Frankly, due to the number of subjects in the sample and the way the study was conducted, it is not possible to say that this activation will always be the same for all subjects.

Another important factor to consider is that only the “positive aspects” of Christmas are showcased, ignoring, for example, the role of mushrooms lost during the celebrations. Did I mention mushrooms aren’t pretty?

A hormonal gift for Christmas

Other studies look at the psychological aspects of Christmas and link the date to past events that have a positive or negative impact on the subjects’ experiences. What kid has never been afraid of Santa Claus at the mall?

For some, it may evoke positive memories of year-end celebrations, family gatherings, typical Christmas meals, and even the joy of giving and receiving gifts.

In these cases, the emotion, memories and “Christmas spirit” evoked It occurs in a series of neuronal activations and stimuli that release hormonal fluids linked to happiness.“love”, reward and well-being.

But as we saw with the Grinch, Christmas isn’t always nice. In these situations, instead of feeling good, we may experience emotions such as suffering, sadness, stress, and worsening of mental health symptoms.

Traumatic events unrelated to Christmas but occurring close to year-end festivities may also contribute to altering the “Christmas spirit” mapped by Haddock, altering areas of brain activation and even triggering stress-related cortisol release.

Neuroscience in Christmas rescue

It would be pretty simple He also says that there is no cure for the lack of Christmas spirit as he says it is. Whether we celebrate year-end celebrations or not, we are all bound by traditions.

Changing some factors about people’s lives and experiences can give them new meaning to the celebration of traditional dates. In this way, some kind of solution would be reached. However, the opposite is also possible, causing the previously eagerly awaited date to become uncomfortable and disgusting.

We don’t have a concrete answer in neuroscience as to how these changes actually occur, but we do know that it’s linked to how we view the events that permeate our lives.

You Lack of “Christmas spirit” doesn’t need to be curedHowever, you can try to have a nice moment at a stage when the year is ending and new perspectives can be drawn for the next year.

Even if you’re not interested in year-end celebrations, you might be interested in knowing how quantum physics explains Santa’s deliveries. Could it be an electron? Happy holidays and watch out for flying mushrooms!