In a new study, neuroscientists use MRI scans to understand why, neurologically
speaking, some people are so into the holiday spirit, while others seem to lack it entirely.
The Christmas spirit has been commonly described as feelings of joy and nostalgia mixed with associations to merry feelings, gifts, delightful smells, and good food.
The authors of the study however noted that "millions of people are prone to displaying Christmas spirit deficiencies," and refer to this as the 'bah humbug' syndrome.
The study involved 10 participants who celebrated Christmas, and 10 healthy participants who lived in the same area, but
who had no Christmas traditions.
They had the participants look at images of Christmas-related pictures, and pictures of everyday items, and scanned their brains using MRI. They noted several differences between the two groups.
Differences in the brain activation maps from the scans of the two groups were analysed to identify Christmas specific brain activation
The people who celebrated Christmas had more activation in the parietal lobules, the premotor cortex, and the somatosensory cortex. The parietal lobules are known to be related to self-transcendence, which is a big part of spirituality. The premotor cortex was more active in the Christmas-happy people, and is also active when we’re sharing an emotional experience by
mirroring other people’s body movements. And the somatosensory cortex is thought to be active when people perceive socially relevant information in faces of people they’re interacting with.
The team does admit that it’s a little dangerous to try to whittle the magic of
Christmas down to neural activity alone –”Although merry and intriguing, these
findings should be interpreted with caution”– they said.
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