In a new
study, researchers found a notable change in the brains of 16 women who wrote
daily about gratitude in an online journal. Today in Relief Society, we had an activity to learn about journaling and family history and we even made some journals.
In the study, the
gratitude group was more likely to take pleasure watching a donation going to
Food for Lane County rather than receiving the money themselves.
Researchers captured the evidence with MRI scans of the women’s
brains as they viewed such giving at the beginning of the study and again after
three weeks of journaling. The scans detected changes in oxygen metabolism in
cells in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area deep in the brain.
The same region has been associated with altruistic traits in
previous studies. Research leader Christina Karns, a research associate in the
psychology department at the University of Oregon, says that the journaling
recalibrated the neural value of altruism, something that could be seen as
handy during the holiday season.
“When we are counting our blessings, this part of the brain is
giving us this neural currency that makes us literally richer,” says Karns,
director of her department’s Emotions and Neuroplasticity Project.
“Making use of this neural currency, giving is something that is
done with a grateful heart, with a feeling of your own abundance for what
others have done for you,” Karns says.
Have you
read?
In this first short-term study, she says, only women ages 18–27
were recruited, to reduce variability in the project. Initially, researchers
assessed the women through brain scans and questionnaires designed to
discreetly identify altruistic traits, during which they viewed transactions of
a sum of money going to the food bank or routed to themselves.
The participants whose answers to the questionnaire showed more
altruistic and grateful traits had a larger reward-related brain response when
the charity received money than when they received the money themselves. That
raised the question: can practicing gratitude change this response?
Next, to test the journaling intervention, researchers assigned
the women randomly to one of two groups. One group made daily journal entries
in response to prompts focused on gratitude; the other group wrote after
getting neutral, non-gratitude prompts.
Three weeks later, the participants returned to the Lewis Center
for Neuroimaging to repeat the questionnaires and, while researchers scanned
them again, they viewed transactions of money going to the food bank or
themselves. MRI captured notable shifts in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
“The gratitude-journal group, as a whole, whether or not they
started high in altruism, increased that value signal toward the charity
getting the money over watching themselves get the money,” Karns says. “It’s as
if they became generous toward others than themselves.”
The study shows that the part of the brain that supports
feelings of reward is flexible, allowing for changes in values linked to
feelings of altruism.
“Our findings suggest that there’s more good out there when
there is gratitude,” says Karns.
Former University of Oregon doctoral student William E. Moore
III, now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, was a coauthor on the
study with Karns and Mayr.
The funding for the research came from the Expanding the Science
and Practice of Gratitude Project through the Greater Good Science Center, in
partnership with the University of California and the Templeton Religious Trust
via the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing at the University of
Oklahoma.
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