- What exactly is the Christmas spirit?
Well, a team of Danish neuroscientists
have an answer for us, and it's hardly
a bathrobe Dickensian ghost.
Holiday cheer, as it turns out,
amounts to a smattering of
increased brain activity.
(gentle instrumental music)
Now, before you charge the
researchers with Scroogery,
let's calm down a little.
There are no shockers here.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
is a common neuroimaging tool,
and we use it repeatedly to study
the inner workings of the human brain.
Specifically, it allows
us to observe blood flow
and blood oxygenation changes associated
with specific cognitive activities.
Love, fear, creativity,
meditation, orgasm,
it's all fair game.
The researchers here rounded up
26 healthy test subjects from
in and around Copenhagen.
10 with routine Christmas traditions,
10 without and six
individuals who were excluded
for either weak or negative
Christmas associations.
This was about identifying
Christmas cheer, after all,
not diagnosing the Grinch.
Then, they subjecting the
remaining 20 individuals
to a mix of Christmas-themed
and neutral images
to see what lit up in the
old three-pound cheese ball.
For those possessed by the holiday spirit,
the brain lit up like,
well, a small smattering
of tangled Christmas tree lights.
Specifically, we're talking
increased blood-oxygen level
dependent activation in
the sensory motor cortex,
the premotor and primary motor cortex,
and the parietal lobule.
These areas tie into a number
of different cognitive functions including
spirituality, somantic senses
and recognition of facial emotion.
This Christmas brain network demonstrated
far more activation among
the 10 Christmas lovers
versus the remaining 10, and they quote,
"non-Christmas group".
It's certainly an
amusing scientific study,
and one that the researchers
themselves approached
with a certain amount of levity.
But, it also eliminates the complex manner
in which the brain processes
seasonal cultural stimuli.
Also, hey, perhaps a follow-up study
will pave the way for an
electromagnetic scatter gun
capable of jolting the
overzealous holiday joy
right out of a caroler's brain.
The first true super-weapon
in our continuing war on Christmas.
So, how do these findings match up
with your holiday brain?
Let us know, and if you want more kitings
of science and weird, be sure to visit
now.howstuffworks.com each and every day.
