Christmas spirit. Does it exist? Why people get so emotional during this time of the year?

01/12/2023 at 05:12:04

Christmas parties has been part of majority family celebration all over the world for about centuries. For those countries who follow the christian religion, christmas ceremony are celebrate every december, 25th, and it means the day when the messiah Jesus Christ was born on Earth. He was a spiritual leader who taught the meaning of human life and pure mean of love.

During christmas it is common to watch some differences on people behaviour. Joy, happiness, feeling of gratitude and sharing, intended to increase. That is what some people call of christmas spirit. It is common to watch people joining on voluntary movement to help feed homeless, to help poor families to maintain the tradition to give to their kids Santa Claus’s christmas gift, and charity throughout communities. But what does exactly means christmas spirit? Does it exist? and if it does, how it changes the human brain and heart feelings?

A very interesting scientific report was published on 2015 named as Evidence of a Christmas spirit network in the brain: functional MRI study. Their purpose was to identify the biochemical and physiological phenomenon that could explain the behaviour changes during what so called christmas spirit. In order to do that, the scientists have done an experiment with two group of patients. The first group was holding people who have celebrated christmas since youth, it was part of their traditional culture. On the other hand, the second group, have no traditional culture and was not used to celebrate the ceremony. During the experiment 84 pictures was shown to both group of patients. Some of the pictures have symbolic christmas features, and other pictures have nothing related to christmas.

Image: pictures showed on experiment

To understand what was going on the participants brains, the scientists have used an non invasive brain technique named as fMRI. The fMRI as known as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, it is the most used neuroimage technique on clinical and research environment. The fMRI measures the blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal. When an area of the brain is activated it requires more blood to that specific region in order to keep the neurons working. So that, the fMRI uses biomarkers that can identify the brain regions when it is activated.

The scientists ends the paper saying that there is a difference on brain activity when the christmas pictures was showed for both groups. In both groups the visual cortex is activated, which was expected since it is the main area responsible to process images. However, what was interesting is that in the christmas group other areas was activated when was shown christmas pictures. The areas that was activated is related to spirituality and recognition emotions in faces expressions, such as the parietal lobules, the premotor cortex, and the somatosensory cortex.

The study says that the parietal lobules has been related in previous researches to play an important role in self transcendence and spirituality. The frontal premotor cortex is recognized on experiencing emotions shared with other individuals. So that explains the feeling of joy and pleasant. And the somatosensory cortex has been related to share and recognize facial emotional expressions.

The study concluded that there is a christmas spirit network in the brain that lead humans to have joy spirit during the christmas night.

Reference:

[1] Evidence of a Christmas spirit network in the brain: functional MRI study. Anders Hougaard, Ulrich Lindberg, Nanna Arngrim, Henrik B W Larsson, Jes Olesen, Faisal Mohammad Amin, Messoud Ashina, Bryan T Haddock. 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6266

[2] An introduction to fMRI. F. Gregory Ashby. 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285245634_An_introduction_to_fMRI