Christmas Spirit Linked To Brain Activity

Dr. Jeffrey Sunshine, vice chairman in the Department of Radiology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center said the study was fun, but not highly scientific and looked at how researchers may someday make something as intangible as holiday spirit into a tangible presence on an MRI scan.

By attaching each individual to state of the art brain imagery recorders, the team was able to see what happened when various Christmas-related images were presented, along with pictures of things that had nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever.

Only 10 participants celebrated Christmas, while the other 10 did not.

Studying the brains of 20 participants, the team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to measure the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that responded to particular neural activities. They asked the participants to fill questionnaires on their feeling towards Christmas.

Participants watched a series of images through video goggles as they were being scanned. The first group was comprised of people who enjoyed the Yuletide, whilst the second group was comprised with people who harbored no affiliation to Christmas.

The volunteers included 10 Danish people, who celebrate Christmas, and 10 Turkish, Indian, Pakistani and Iraqi people, who are not associated with Christmas celebrations.

Or to put it another way, Christmas spirit may well not only be something that can be seen and measured, but is also something you quite literally either have or you don’t.

But if you really want to know if someone’s in the Christmas spirit, Haddock suggests just asking them.

Both groups experienced increased activation in the primary visual cortex while viewing the Christmas images, but there were five areas with a significantly stronger activation in the Christmas group than the other – including the parietal lobules, known to “play a determining role in self-transcendence, the personality trait regarding predisposition to spirituality”, according to the study.

The participants had their brains examined using MRI scans.

Naturally, in keeping with the good spirit of the holiday, we disagree with these negative perspectives.

“Although merry and intriguing, these findings should be interpreted with caution”, they explained. “Therefore we, in the best interest of the readers of course, decided not to ruin the good Christmas cheer for everyone by letting this influence our interpretation of the study”.

“The study design doesn’t distinguish whether the observed activation is Christmas specific or the result of any combination of joyful, festive, or nostalgic emotions in general”, researchers wrote.

Tis the season to be jolly…well, for most of us. Maybe the groups were different in other ways apart from the obvious cultural difference.