4 Things You Can Do to Cheer Up, According

to Neuroscience
 January 4, 2017

by Robby Berman

(PHILLIPE PUT)

For everyone, there are times when a dark cloud just seems to be following you around. You
may not even even know why. While we don’t mean to minimize the value of medication for
those who experience this on a daily basis, UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb, author of The
Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at
a Time, has some insights that might just get you back on the sunny side. It’s all got to do with
neuroscience.

Getting Your Brain’s Attention

(TONY BIRRER)

Your brain has some unhelpful ideas of its own on how to feel good. If you’re experiencing guilt
or shame, it may be because your brain’s trying — ineffectively — to activate its reward center.
Wait, what?

According to Korb, “Despite their differences, pride, shame, and guilt all activate similar neural
circuits, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and the nucleus
accumbens. This explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves —
they're activating the brain's reward center.“

A similar thing may be going if you just can’t seem to stop worrying. Korb says worrying
stimulates the medial prefrontal cortex and lowers activity in the amygdala, thus helping your
limbic system, your emotions, remain copascetic. His theory is that, even though worry is widely
recognized as a pointless thing to do from a tactical point of view, apparently the brain considers
it better than doing nothing at all when you’re anxious.

So the obvious question is how you can take positive control of this destructive little dance?
Korb suggests asking yourself: “What am I grateful for?” His reasoning is chemical: “One
powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. Trying to think of things you are
grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases
serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex.”
Even more intriguingly, actually coming up with something you’re thankful for — not always an
easy thing to do in a dark mood — isn’t even required. Just the acts of remembering to be
thankful is the flexing of a type of emotional intelligence: “One study found that it actually
affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density
changes suggest that as emotional intelligence increases, the neurons in these areas become more
efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful.”

He-Who-Actually-Must-Be-Named

(REBECCA SIEGEL)

So, okay, you’re still down. Try and get more specific. What, exactly, is the bad feeling you
have? Anger? Stress? Sadness? Loneliness? Neuroscience says that just giving your darkness a
name defuses it.
Author David Rock’s book Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction,
Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long explains:
“To reduce arousal, you need to use just a few words to describe an emotion, and ideally use
symbolic language, which means using indirect metaphors, metrics, and simplifications of your
experience. This requires you to activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the
limbic system. Here's the bottom line: describe an emotion in just a word or two, and it helps
reduce the emotion.”

Korb notes that fMRI studies support this idea, like one in which “participants viewed pictures of
people with emotional facial expressions. Predictably, each participant's amygdala activated to
the emotions in the picture. But when they were asked to name the emotion, the ventrolateral
prefrontal cortex activated and reduced the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words,
consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact.”

FBI negotiators use labeling to try and calm hostage negotiators, and it’s also an important tool
in mindfulness.

You’re the Decider

(TOTEMISOTTAPA)
Worried and anxious? One thing to try is making a decision about what’s got you worked up. It
doesn’t even have to be the perfect decision; just a good one will do. As Korb notes: “Trying for
the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into
the decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates
more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control …” Korb: “Actively
choosing caused changes in attention circuits and in how the participants felt about the action,
and it increased rewarding dopamine activity. Making decisions includes creating intentions and
setting goals — all three are part of the same neural circuitry and engage the prefrontal cortex in
a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety. Making decisions also helps overcome striatum
activity, which usually pulls you toward negative impulses and routines. Finally, making
decisions changes your perception of the world — finding solutions to your problems and
calming the limbic system.”

A key thing here is that you’re making a conscious decision, or choice, and not just being
dragged to a resolution. Your brain gets no reward for that.

If you’re still reluctant to make a choice between one option or another, the science suggest don’t
worry, you’re likely to gain a positive bias toward the decision you make anyway. As Korb
notes, “We don't just choose the things we like; we also like the things we choose.”

The Power of Touch

Okay, so let’s be clear right up front: You should only be touching others who want to be
touched. All right, then…
(PETER HARRISON)

Got someone to hug? Go for it. Korb says “A hug, especially a long one, releases a
neurotransmitter and hormone oxytocin, which reduces the reactivity of the amygdala.”

Hand holding, pats on the back, and handshakes work, too. Korb cites a study in which subjects
whose hands were held by their partners experienced a reduced level of anxiety while waiting for
an expected electrical shock from researchers. “The brain showed reduced activation in both the
anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — that is, less activity in the pain and
worrying circuits.”

And if you have no one handy to touch, guess what? Massage has also been shown to be an
effective way to get your oxytocin flowing, and it reduces stress hormones and increases your
dopamine levels. Win win.

The value of touching shouldn’t be overlooked when you’re down. According to Korb: “In fact,
as demonstrated in an fMRI experiment, social exclusion activates the same circuitry as physical
pain … at one point they stopped sharing, only throwing back and forth to each other, ignoring
the participant. This small change was enough to elicit feelings of social exclusion, and it
activated the anterior cingulate and insula, just like physical pain would.”

Nobody’s in a good mood all the time, so hopefully these insights will be of use to if there comes
some dark and stormy day.