Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. We are talking all about the science of gratitude. In part. We're doing this because of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, which of course, is all about giving. Thanks
gratitude, but also because there's now a wealth of data showing that having an effective gratitude
practice can
Impact, a huge number of Health variables,
both mental health, and physical health, in positive ways. Things like cardiovascular health, things, like relationships.
Things like mental health, things like, physical and cognitive performance. And these are not small effects.
These are very large positive
effects. However, in researching this episode, I was completely surprised as to what constitutes
an effective gratitude, practice. I, I think like many of you would have thought that an effective gratitude practice, simply involves
writing down.
A few things or many things that were grateful for we're thinking about those or really making an effort to some Mattis eyes or feel, some of the elements of gratitude
while writing out that list or thinking about that list.
It turns out that in effect of gratitude practice doesn't resemble that at all, the neuroimaging
data, the physiological data, looking at things like inflammatory markers,
other studies purely, looking at the psychology and the long and short term,
effects of an effective gratitude
practice.
To a completely different
approach to using gratitude to positively impact, Health metrics.
Fortunately. These are things that we can all do very easily. Some of them are actually fun. You can do them or in a variety of contexts. So today, we're going to talk about the science of effective gratitude practices
and we're going to describe what those are and how you can incorporate them into your
life. Before we dive into today's topic. I just want to highlight a particularly interesting set of findings from the literature. This is a study that came out in the journal cell report. Cell Press Journal, X.
Violent Journal. It's very relevant to today's
Topic. In fact, we're going to spend more time with this paper, a little bit later in the episode. The
study involved having subjects. Listen to a story, the subjects are all listening to the same story. But those subjects are not listening
to it. Together. They're not rounded up in a
circle or all in a room. They're in separate rooms or entirely separate locations on the planet or
they are actually brought into the laboratory on separate
days.
What this study found is that different subjects, listening to the same story. Undergo the same variation in heart rate. In other words, the gaps between their heartbeats start to resemble one another in response to the same story. Now, this is very interesting. This is a coordination of the physiology of the body, in response to a narrative, a story in different people and yet when they line up the heart
rates of these,
People who listen to the story completely different times. They find that those heart rates map onto one
another almost identically, it's really remarkable. We're going to
talk about what this means in
terms of coordination of neural circuits in the brain and neural circuits in the body and the organs such as the heart, but also the lungs and other organs of the body. And what
this means for changing one's overall State. A key thing that's going to come up today again. And again, is the distinction between traits which are pervasive.
Civ aspects of who we
are. And how we tend to react to different types of
circumstances and states, which are more transient they
tend to, you know, you can invoke a state in somebody, a state of fear, a state of relaxation.
But what this study really starts to point to is that there are specific approaches that any of us can take in order to really rewire our nervous system such that
we are calmer. If we want to be calmer in certain circumstances
that we are more
responsive in certain circumstances if that's our
goal. So we'll return to how
I would go about doing that. I think these results are just beautiful in the sense that they really show that our brain and our body are
highly coordinated because people are listening to the story and the heart rate
is changing in response to the story. But that there is a, what we call a stereo Tepee us sort of stereotyped response to a given story in my mind. There was no reason why the
results had to be this way, you know, two people listen to
the same story. Why should their heart rates
be almost identical to the same story. Very, very interesting and points to the power of
Narrative and story in coordinating, our physiology. And this is something powerful that we can leverage before we begin. I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's
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I'd like to emphasize the various aspects of
mental and physical health that have been shown to benefit from a regular gratitude practice.
There are studies showing that performing a gratitude practice twice or three times or even just once a week can
Lead to a pervasive, a long-lasting impact on
subjective well-being. People report, feeling happier more, meaning Joy. Even awe, for their life experience. Simply in response to adding a gratitude practice. The key thing is it has to be the right, gratitude practice, and we're going to talk about what the right gratitude practice looks like in just a little bit but there are additional benefits of a gratitude practice.
There are studies showing that a regular gratitude practice can provide
To
trauma in two ways. It can provide a reframing and resilience to Prior traumatic
experiences. So buffering people against the - physiological effects and psychological effects of earlier trauma, but also inoculating them in many ways to any traumas that might arrive later in
life. So, that's a powerful thing. And today, we will talk about how that's actually accomplished. It's actually accomplished by
Shifting, the way that the fear and defense networks in the brain actually function.
We'll get right down into the details of
that. The other thing that a gratitude practice does is it's been shown to benefit social relationships, but not just for the relationship in
which you Express gratitude, right?
So on the face of it, you might think okay if I Express gratitude for somebody over and over over and over over and over then I'm going to feel better about that person and
indeed that is one effect of our gratitude practice. That's called a pro-social or inter social gratitude practice, but
there are now several studies recent studies in good journals. Pointing to the fact that
Regular gratitude practice can also enhance one social relationships across the board in the
workplace at school at with family and romantic relationships and even ones relationship to themselves, which is really what the subjective feelings of well-being are.
So it's clear to me that an effective gratitude practice has an outsized effect on many, many
aspects of mental, and physical health.
And for those of you that are coming to this conversation thinking.
Gratitude, practice. Oh, that's kind of wishy-washy or whoo. It's going to involve you.
I'm putting your hand on your heart and feeling into all the amazing things that you happen to have.
Even when things are really terrible. That's not where we're going at all.
And equally important is to understand that the neurochemical the anti-inflammatory and the neural circuit mechanisms that gratitude can invoke are equally on par with some of the
effects of pharmacology of things like high, intensity, interval training, and
exercise. And other things that we think of, as kind of more potent forms of self intervention. So if you are of the mindset that a gratitude practice is kind of weak sauce.
Buckle
up because the data actually point to the fact that a gratitude practice is a
very, very potent
way in which you can steer your mental and physical health in Positive Directions, and that those effects are very long lasting
before we dive into the tools and mechanisms and scientific studies around gratitude. Like to just set the framework for the discussion, gratitude is what we call a pro-social behavior or a
pro-social mindset. Now, you can be grateful for something without involving anybody else. So the so,
She'll part isn't meant to convey anything about interpersonal relations. Although it can. And today we're going to talk a lot about how interpersonal relations can be incorporated into a gratitude practice and really powerful ways.
But pro-social behaviors are basically any Behavior or mode of thinking that allow us to be more effective in interactions with other people including
ourselves.
Now pro-social is not just a name that we give
these different tools and practices and
mindsets. They're actually neural circuits in the brain.
Rain that are specifically wired for pro-social
thoughts and behaviors. And these are distinctly
different from the circuits in the brain that are involved in defensive behaviors. So without getting into too much detail, just yet. We will later, we have circuits in the brain that are what we call, appetitive. They are designed to bring us closer to things and to bring us into closer relation to the details of that sensory
experience. Now, that could be a delicious
food that you're eating. It could be interacting with a loved one. It could be
Acting with a friend or anyone that you happen to, like it could even be in
your relation to yourself.
These circuits that were calling
pro-social circuits light up in the brain. If in neuroimaging, meaning the neurons are firing more actively more, electrically robustly, sort of like turning up the volume on these neural circuits in the brain
and the neural circuits in the brain that are associated with aversive or defensive
behaviors things like backing up, things like covering up the vital organs of the body, things like a
quaking of the voice, all of the
Associated with defensive behaviors are actually antagonized, meaning they are reduced when the
pro-social circuits are more active.
So the framework here that I'd like to set is that we have this kind of seesaw of neural circuits in the brain. One set that are pro-social and are designed to bring us closer to others including
ourselves closer to certain sensory experiences, right? Because a lot of pro-social behaviors can also be geared towards things like pets or
food or anything that we find. We want to be closer to in.
Want more of whereas the defensive circuits involve areas of the brain. Yes, such as areas that are involved in fear, but also areas of the brain and body that are literally associated with freezing or with backing up. So the way to think about gratitude is that falls under this category of pro-social behaviors, which are designed to bring us closer to different types of things and to enhance the level of
detail that we extract from those experiences.
Now, the existence of
these two neural circuits that I've got.
Based on this sort of metaphorical seesaw, if you
will.
Runs counter to a lot of the messaging or the ideas that were put
forth in the last century about the psychology of happiness and gratitude versus the the psychology of depression and struggle and concern about the future. And
I'd like to read a quote from the
great and we should we really should call him the great Sigmund Freud. Because despite having certain traits that people criticize him of fraud.
Was indeed a genius about many aspects of psychology,
but I just want to read you Freud stance on
happiness and this invokes elements of gratitude as well. And then you can gauge for
yourself quote. Our possibilities of Happiness are already restricted by our
constitution. So he's saying that we're basically wired to not have happiness,
easily unhappiness is much less difficult to experience. We are threatened with suffering from three directions, one from our own body.
Which is doomed to Decay and disillusion and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals to, from the external World which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless
forces of Destruction
and three. And finally, from our relations, with others, the suffering of which, from this last source is perhaps more painful to us than any other.
That's Sigmund. Freud. And
not, all of his writings were
that pessimistic. If you will,
what Freud is referring to there?
Are those defensive circuits? And of course, he talked about psychological defensives,
and in full disclosure. I am a huge fan of
much of the psychological literature, and psychoanalysis of Sigmund, Freud, and his descendants of young and others. I think there are strong elements of Truth there,
but it gives you a sense of the kind of mindset of
psychology early in the last century.
And then of course was the
emergence of the positive psychology
movement, which was really about invoking the understanding.
And eventually the elucidation
of the neural circuits for things like happiness and awe and affiliation and things that we are calling pro-social circuits.
So the field of psychology has a dark and light, if you will. And the field of
Neuroscience has a dark and light, you have these what we call parallel Pathways in the brain,
and we have parallel Pathways in the mind that set us up for feeling good about
things or for feeling less good about things. I
think, what's really Salient from the quote from Freud. Is that what he's saying is our
Our default is to be concerned about the future to be wrapped in our
defenses, and to, some extent. That's true. And the reason we can say that's true is because most of us need a gratitude practice.
We need to do certain things in order to feel good and to
feel happy. We actually have to put work into it. It is quite possible that there's an asymmetry in
the way that these pro-social versus defensive circuits are
set up, such that because defensive Circle,
It's are designed to keep us
safe, psychologically, and physically safe that they have more robustness
or they can actually drive our Behavior more easily. I'll give you an analogy in the system that I'm most familiar with as a
neuroscientist, which is the visual system in the visual system. We
have parallel Pathways. We have neurons in our eye
that respond when things in our
environment get brighter, literally, when the lights go up these neurons start firing like crazy
and we have neurons in our eye that
respond when things get darker, when things start
Wing or go from white to black,
the circuits for detecting
darkening are much more robust and much more numerous than are the circuits for brightness. And that is
probably related probably to the
fact that dark
objects or experiencing looming, meaning
incoming objects, and being able to
perceive them is something that's
vital to our survival. Whereas being able to perceive the
brightening of things might be important
to survival in certain.
Context, you know, car lights coming at you at night or something of that
sort, but not as often
in a kind of evolutionary or ethological context as the darkening of things.
So, I think Freud's, quote and the field of psychology. Now point to the fact that
indeed we have the capacity for happiness, and we have the capacity for great, worry and concern, and depression, and unhappiness, and the neural circuit literature. Also supports
that. The key thing for today's discussion. Is that gratitude?
Turns out to be one of the most potent wedges by which we can
insert our thinking. And as you also see our the physiology of our body between
these two circuits and give a little more levity. If you will to the side of the Seesaw, that's associated with
positive pro-social feelings. And if you keep
imagining this seesaw imagery, what's really beautiful about gratitude practices is that if they're performed repeatedly and not even that often but
Repeatedly, then one can actually shift their neural circuits, such that, the Seesaw that I'm
calling pro-social versus defensive behaviors can actually start to
Tilt at the little hinge. If you will on the Seesaw, in the middle, can be adjusted in a little tighter when the side for gratitude and for well-being,
and for feelings of Happiness is a little bit
higher. What this means is that whether or not Freud was right or wrong, whether or not the neuroscientist on what in one
camp, or another right or
wrong.
We now know with certainty that a regular gratitude practice can shift the pro-social circuit so that they
dominate our physiology. And our mindset in ways that can enhance many, many aspects of our physical and mental health by
default. So we don't always have to
constantly be in practice, trying to be happy.
So the succinct way of saying all this is, yes, indeed. We might
be wired or in such that we have a
greater propensity
for unhappiness than happiness, but gratitude.
Practices provided, they are the effective ones and they are performed
regularly. Can shift those circuits. Such that
we are happier on average. Even when we are not performing those
practices. Now, I'd like to talk about some of the neurochemistry and
neural circuits associated with gratitude and pro-social behaviors numerous times on this podcast. I've talked about so called neuromodulators those of you that might have forgotten or have never heard of neuromodulators before. Neuromodulators are chemicals. That are released in the brain and body.
D that change the activity of other neural circuits, they make
certain brain areas, more
likely to be active and other brain areas, less likely to be active. These neuromodulators have names like dopamine serotonin, acetylcholine epinephrine and so on
the main neuromodulators associated with gratitude and pro-social behaviors tends to
be serotonin,
serotonin is released from a very small collection of neurons
in the brain stem called the RAF Ara.
Phe the raphe nucleus and a few other places in the brain
and the RAF, a neuron send these little wires
that we call. Axons out to numerous places in the brain.
And they tend to increase the activity of
particular, neural circuits
that lend themselves to more approach to
particular types of experiences that makes total sense. If you think about it, have a
chemical that under certain circumstances released in the brain that triggers the activity of neural circuits.
That makes the organism you more likely to stay in
an interaction with something
or even lean in and seek a more
detailed interaction with that person place or thing.
Beautiful work from a cognitive neuropsychology. Just his name is Antonio damasio.
He's a world-class neuroscientist has been in the game. A very long
time has explored the so-called neural correlates of gratitude and two main brain
areas are activated by these
serotonergic systems and when people experience something that makes them
feel gratitude, even if it's shallow gratitude or deep and if it's all the way too deep,
Gratitude, they see activation of
these particular brain circuits. I'll
mention in a moment and the amount of activation scales with how intensely
the person experience the feeling of gratitude.
And those two areas have particular names. You don't need to know the names, but for those of you that want to know, they are the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex. And of course these brain areas are
connected to a number of other networks in the brain. In fact, that's how they get you
or others to lean into certain experience experiences. Because when these
These areas are active. Certain thought processes, get invoked.
Those thought processes. Probably resemble something like, hmm. I'd like to experience more of this or this feels really good
and then they literally feed on to your muscles
via the neurons. Making you
happy to stay stationary. If you're
experiencing something you like or to move closer to something that you find attractive to you. Literally. So, these are powerful circuits of
these two brain areas. The one I'd like to focus on
The most is the medial prefrontal cortex. Many of you have probably heard of the medial prefrontal cortex because this is the area of the brain
that is involved in planning, and in deep
thinking, and evaluation of different types of experiences past present, or future. It seems actually that pretty much every
study of human. Anything seems to involve the medial prefrontal cortex, or at least one could get that impression just by looking at scientific abstracts and papers these
days. So I think
it's worth us, taking a step back and asking, what is the medial prefrontal
cortex really do, right. How
could this one piece of neural real
estate that we all have right behind our forehead. How could that be involved in so many different things?
And the reason it can be involved in so many different things and the reason it's especially important for
gratitude. Is that
medial prefrontal cortex sets context? Okay, it sets context and
it literally defines the meaning of your experience.
Now, this is not at all an abstract phenomenon. I'm going to
A
very physiological example of this and then we're going to translate it to gratitude. But I really want everyone to
understand. How is it that medial prefrontal cortex sets the
context of everything in your life. Well, it does it the following way. You
have a number of circuits deeper in your brain, that simply create some
Sensations or they allow you. I should say to perceive certain.
Sensations. Let's use the example of
cold exposure, something that we'd sometimes, talk about in this podcast for other
reasons.
If you were to deliberately Place yourself into an ice
bath,
it would be uncomfortable. Even if you're
adapted to cold. And so
forth. The discomfort is non-negotiable. However, if you are doing it
because you want to or because you have knowledge that there are particular health benefits
the medial prefrontal cortex can then control areas of your
deeper brain like the
hypothalamus to pause.
Really impact the neuro chemicals that are released into your
system. You'll still get a lot of adrenaline by getting into the ice bath.
But the fact that you are doing this deliberately, and your knowledge that you are making the choice that it's you, that's
deciding to put yourself through this discomfort
has been shown to create a very different and positive
effect on things like dopamine on things like anti inflammatory markers in your immune system, Etc.
Compared to if someone
Pushes you into an ice bath
or if you are doing it because someone insists
that you do it and you really really don't want
to. So there's a very subtle distinction here. It's just a, it's just the distinction
of motivation and desire or lack of motivation and being forced into something.
And there are a number of other effects
of this have been described in the episode with Robert sapolsky that I did earlier. This
last year. He talked about it. A study in animals, which has also been shown in humans if you take a mouse for instance and it runs on a running wheel.
Which mice really like to do. There are many positive effects on reducing blood pressure improvements in
neurochemistry, Etc in that Mouse. However,
if there's a mouse in the cage right next to it, that's trapped in the running
wheel and it has to
run every time. The other
Mouse runs because the wheels are linked.
Well, then the second mouse that's forced to do the exact same running experiences - shifts in
their overall health metrics blood pressure goes up, stress hormones, go up etcetera because it's not actually making the
choice media.
The prefrontal cortex is the knob, it is or the switch
rather that
can take one experience and allow us to frame it. Such that it creates
positive health effects,
and the exact same experience framed
as something we don't want to do or that we are forced to do can create negative health effects.
Now, how exactly the neurons and medial, prefrontal cortex do that is rather complicated and frankly, not completely understood, but it somehow able to adjust the activity of other neural.
It's that are purely reflexive as we say, Neuroscience, like really dumb neural circuits there, just like
switches and place a context on to it. So gratitude is a mindset that activates prefrontal cortex and in doing so sets the context of your experience such that you can derive, tremendous
health benefits, which leads us to the
question. What kind of gratitude practice is going to accomplish this, right? Because it is not simply the
The case that I could take a knife don't, please don't do this
experiment and cut my
hand and say, oh, you know, I'm I'm going to enjoy this. I'm doing this because this is good for me and it
won't hurt. Of course. It'll hurt just like the ice bath is cold. No matter
what, but I can't lie to myself. Right? If I if I have some knowledge that cutting myself is bad, for me that's very hard to override. And so the medial prefrontal cortex has a tremendous capacity to set context and it does that beautifully with
Spectre, gratitude, but you can't simply lie to yourself. You can't simply say. Oh well, every experience is a learning experience. Or, you know, a terrible thing happens. Oh good. I'm just going to say good and that your body will react as if it's good for you. That's a myth and frankly. It's a myth that's fairly pervasive in the self-help and self-actualization literature. We have the opportunity to reframe and set context on our experiences, but that requires a very specific set of
practices.
We can't simply lie to ourselves or quote, unquote, fake it, until we make
it neural. Circuitry is very powerful and very
plastic. It can be modified and it's very context
dependent, but it's not stupid. And
when you lie to yourself about
whether or not an experience is actually good for you or not, your brain knows. So what does an effective gratitude practice look like? Well, let's examine what an ineffective.
What a poor gratitude practice looks like
because
In life, some really important information, including the fact that I, and I
think millions of other people out there are doing it wrong.
Most gratitude practices that you see online and that people talk about in various talks and so
forth, involves something like writing down or reciting or thinking about
five or 10 or 3 or 20 things that you're especially
grateful for and then really trying to feel into some of those really try and think deeply about the emotions. The sensations, the perceptions that are
associated with those particular people places and things,
On your
list.
Most studies
actually point to the fact that that style of gratitude practice is
not particularly effective. In shifting, your neural, circuitry, your neural chemistry, or your somatic.
Circuitry. This is the circuits in your body because you literally have organs and neural circuits that are connected
the circuits of your brain and body toward.
Enhanced. Activation of prefrontal Cortex, enhance activation of these pro-social neural networks that we were talking about earlier.
Now that
Come as a surprise to many of you and certainly came as a surprise. To me. There is some evidence that if there's a shift in so-called autonomic
arousal during these gratitude practices, these ones that I'm calling ineffective that they can be made slightly more
effective. So what do I mean by a shift in autonomic arousal? Well, very briefly. We have a aspect to our nervous system both within our brain and body that we call the
autonomic nervous system. It's a
little bit of a misnomer because autonomic
It's
automatic. And in fact, we can take control of the autonomic nervous system. It has
one branch meaning. One set
of Connections in circuits that are associated with making us more alert. The so-called
sympathetic nervous system,
or I should say sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system. And that's really a mouthful. It's really associated with enhanced alertness of any kind for excitement, or fear and it has nothing to do with sympathy. It's just about enhanced
alertness. And then the other
arm of the autonomic nervous system is the so-called
Sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, but that's also a mouthful.
So let's just say it's the
calming aspect of the autonomic nervous system. So it's associated with decreased heart, rate decreased breathing rate, Etc.
So we have these two aspects to our autonomic nervous system and it has been shown that if people are brought into a state of heightened, sympathetic tone,
meaning, more
alertness, then the intensity of the emotions that they
It's in their gratitude, practice is enhanced. And the effectiveness of that
gratitude practice can be
enhanced. This is seen nowadays, somewhat commonly, as having people, for instance cyclic, hyperventilated
breathing, as we call it in my laboratory breathing, that's very intense of the inhale, exhale, inhale. Exhale, very deeply for 25 or 30 breaths. Then people will sit in a meditative stance or they will focus on their on their note pad and paper and
they'll write out the things that they're grateful for.
They'll really try and feel into those things or they'll think about those things and it makes perfect sense as to why enhancing
autonomic arousal.
Toward more alertness, would create more robust
feelings or more robust impact of the Gratitude practices.
Because in that state you are more alert and therefore, you are able to bring more detail, more
richness to the perception and the understanding of what those things on your list happen to be.
But and I should say that there are numerous other
other
approaches to this it, you know, sort of self-help type stuff and self. Alex actualization seminars. People will do things like cold baths or they'll do
chanting or they'll have any number of different experiences. All of which are mainly geared towards
increased autonomic arousal, you know, they're even practices out there using pharmacology to create increased autonomic arousal and then drop into gratitude
across the board. Those increase the potency of the
Gratitude practice of listing things out on paper or in one's mind. We're saying them out loud.
But somewhat surprisingly, at least to me that form of just expressing. Thanks, expressing gratitude is not the most effective way to shift these pro-social
circuits in positive ways for ones physiology and anatomy and psychology
turns out that the most potent form of
gratitude practice
is not a gratitude practice
where you give gratitude or Express gratitude, but rather where you
Gratitude where you receive. Thanks, and
this to me was very surprising. There are a number of studies about this. Now one in particular that I think is interesting, is called prefrontal activation while listening to a letter of gratitude, read aloud by a
co-worker face-to-face, a near study and IRS. I'll explain what all this means. You now know what, the prefrontal activation part is. This is activation the prefrontal cortex, the
nears, and IRS study. That's just a technical term. It's a, it's a form of it.
Imaging brain activity. It's non-invasive. So, it's
a kind of a skullcap. It looks like a looks like a hoodie with a bunch of
wires coming out of it. Basically, that can measure neural activity without having to remove any parts of the skull
or put a person into one of these tube like fmri machines, which is very
invasive. It's also a wonderful tool because it allows human subjects in the laboratory to move around and to engage with one
another. So, in this
particular experiment, what they did is they
had co-workers, write a letter.
Of gratitude of
thanks to another co-worker,
unbeknownst to the other co-worker.
And then they sat down together, and then the image brain activity. As
this letter was being read, and as the letter was being heard
received and it showed very
robust effects on these, prefrontal networks
that pointed to the fact that receiving gratitude is actually much more potent
in terms of the positive shift so that can create than giving gratitude.
So this raises a couple of important points. First of all,
if you are somebody who is prone to write letters of gratitude. Ideally,
I think it's requisite that these be genuine letters of gratitude or saying things that are genuine expressions of gratitude. This could be by text or in person or by
phone.
You have within you a very
potent form of Shifting. Somebody else's Neurology. Now, that's wonderful. And I think there are many people like that out
there. But for many people who are want to experience the positive effects of
gratitude, you, it's probably not the most advantageous approach to just sit around waiting. Hoping that someone's going to deliver all these letters or words of gratitude. How is it that you can create that sense of receiving gratitude for yourself and thereby derive, the effects of
Attitude as outlined in this particular study
and there we go. Back to the important work of the great Antonio damasio, who explored these neural correlates of gratitude to
define the areas of the brain that are associated with pro-social behaviors, like the prefrontal cortex.
And what's really interesting about the work that damacio and colleagues did is first of all, they used
functional magnetic resonance imaging. So this is a
very high resolution approach
to exploring what areas of the brain are active and the has very high.
What we call temporal resolution, meaning you can see things in time at very fine scales. So a lot of mechanistic detail it can emerge from these sorts of studies.
What they did was interesting rather than have people Express gratitude. They have the subjects, go into the
scanner. So their brains are being
imaged and they watched narratives stories about other
people
experiencing
positive things in their life and in this
Is this was these were powerful stories.
These are stories about survivors of genocide. So that's what they're watching. The subjects were subjects that were not survivors of genocide. So
they were watching these videotapes of people that had
survived genocide.
And had people help
them along the way as part of their Story of Survival, either psychological and or obviously, they survived long enough to make the videos. So, we're physical
survival. So within these stories, there was
Was it conveyance of a lot of struggle. These people talked about the horrible situations they
were in but also small but highly significant features of their history that had led to their own feelings of gratitude. So for instance, you know, it says a woman at the end. This is literally from the scientific paper, you know, somebody had been sick for a week. So the woman's describing how she been six sick for weeks and then another prisoner,
who was a doctor finds a
Medicine somehow. It doesn't describe how and literally saves her life or
an ally. Who was also in a stricken circumstance.
Get gave this person a pair of glasses when their eyesight started to falter. So, these sorts of stories now just hearing this in the context of nothing but a scientific paper and discussion. These probably don't aren't that impactful.
What's really important about this study and is really important for all of us to know is that these stories of other people receiving things
that were
powerful for them in their life trajectory is
embedded in story and the human brain, especially is so oriented towards story. We have neural circuits that like to link together past present
future have different characters, protagonist and antagonist.
From the time. We're very young until the time. We're very old story is one of the major ways that we
organize information in the brain. There does seem to be storytelling and story. Listening circuits in the brain.
What's important is not simply that these people
survive genocide, that's obviously important and wonderful, but
it's not just that they were helped along the way. It's that the description of their help is embedded in
a larger story. So
the human subject is in this scientific study is
watching these powerful stories
and the neural circuits associated with pro-social behaviors and with gratitude, become robustly active when they start to feel some
affiliation with the
In telling the story, they start to feel some resonant. We might call
that empathy. But it doesn't necessarily have to be
empathy. Empathy is a somewhat
complicated thing to Define because it involves literally a setting, aside of One's Own emotions. And really
focusing almost entirely or experiencing almost entirely the emotions of
another. It could be sympathy. It could be empathy. What we do know is that it that the stories themselves were able to
shift the physiology of the subjects in the study and activate these what we're calling.
Ingratitude circuitry that involves the prefrontal cortex.
So if you think about the earlier study that receiving gratitude is the most powerful way to activate
these circuits for gratitude.
The subjects in this study in many ways are receiving a sense of gratitude, but through The Narrative of one of these other subjects, which I find fascinating, you know, I would have
thought a great gratitude practice is we sit down a list out all the things you're grateful for that. Just seems so logical to me,
but it turns out that these
Neural circuits don't work that way that to really activate
these circuits for gratitude in the serotonin and it probably the oxytocin system as well. And it's prefrontal networks
one has to powerfully associate with the idea of receiving help. Okay, this the subjects are
Associating or experiencing empathy or sympathy for somebody else? Who received help in the other study would describe it. A few minutes ago. The person hearing the letter was
receiving gratitude and that would amplify the activity of these circuits
and that takes us to a larger
theme of what are these pro-social circuits and an
important concept to emerge from? This is one of that's most often associated with the
autism literature frankly, which is this idea of theory of
mind. So just very briefly.
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute, or to understand the experience
of another without actually experiencing the thing that they're
experiencing. Again. It kind of sounds like empathy, but this was actually a
term that's now been demonstrated in The Psychology and Neuroscience that's been linked to some very robust findings
associated with brain areas and so forth. That was looking at autistic kids and non-autistic kids, the person largely responsible for
Developing theory of mind is Simon
baron-cohen. Okay, I believe he's out of the brother or the cousin. I can't recall which to the comedian.
Sacha Baron Cohen. Simon baron-cohen is a professor at
Oxford University or at least he was the last time I
checked. And the theory of Mind test can be done on adults. We're on children and we can sort of do that
experiment right now. If you like, and you can think about how you would behave. If you were a subject in a theory of mine test
their remind test involves you or a child or some
Not sitting down and watching a video of a child, going into a room, or a person going to room opening up a desk of
a dresser a drawer, for instance, or a desk drawer,
and placing something in it, like a pen, or a toy and then leaving. And then another person walking into the room and clearly looking for something in the room and one presumes. It's the toy or the
pain, depending on the context,
people who have strong theory of
mind, make the
obvious conclusion.
That the person looking around for the pain or the or the toy is
confused, or they are perplexed. They don't know where the toy is. They're looking for the
toy. Someone who is fairly far to one side of the
autism or Asperger's Spectrum,
will simply
focus on the location of the object, on the location of the, the pen, or the
toy. And this is, especially true in
children. They will say, well, it's in the second drawer. It's in the second drawer and they'll say, well,
how does the person who comes into?
Room feel mill, say well, it's in the drawer. So they tend to focus on the specific factual elements of the scenario rather than Place their mind into
the mind of the other person, so-called theory of
mind. Now, that doesn't mean that people with
autism and Asperger's don't have empathy in some cases. They can it sort of
depends on where they are in the Spectrum and so forth. But theory of mind has very strong basis. In these
prefrontal cortex neural circuits that we were talking about,
because as you
now know, the prefrontal cortex sets
context on what we see and experience and the theory of Mind tasks that I just described very
briefly is a pure example of context setting, right? It's not about the fat, just the
factual elements about the location of the objects. It's about the context.
Someone is looking for something that someone else, put some
place, that makes it such that, that object is hidden. So basically theory of mine is your ability to put yourself into the mindset of
another.
And in order to get activation of these gratitude circuits, one needs to put themselves into the
mindset of another or to directly receive
gratitude. So let's just take a moment and start to think about how we are going to build
out the ultimate. Gratitude practice, meaning the most effective gratitude practice for us to do because of all the many positive effects that an effective gratitude practice can have if it's the proper one.
It's very clear that receiving gratitude is powerful. But it's also very clear that waiting around to receive that gratitude is an
impractical approach. Now, there are methods that have been developed by my colleague at Stanford Kelly
McGonigal and others that actually have
developed things for the workplace for school for co-workers and students to write out particular, worksheets related to, you know, what they're thankful for from others, and exchange them. And so those are very useful practices. I don't want to take anything away from
Important work that Kelly and others have done. But
in the absence of having other people to do these practices with what we know for sure is that there has to be a real
experience of somebody else's experience and that the best way to do that is story. So
in thinking about how to build out an effective gratitude practice,
it's very worthwhile. I believe to
find someone's
narrative. That's powerful for you.
You
in many ways, the thing about this is it's got to be a story that
inspires you because of the, for lack of a better phrase, the beauty of the human
Spirit or the ability of humans to help other humans. And I find this remarkable because what this really means is that the circuits for gratitude are such that we can exchange gratitude. We can actually observe someone else getting help, someone else giving help and that
Observation of our species
doing that. For one,
another allows us to experience the feeling of genuine chemical
and neural circuit activation lift. If you will very, very different than simply writing out the things that you're thankful for,
right? And so, how would you do this? Well, people digest story in a number of different
ways, people, watch movies, people, listen to podcast, people read
books. There are tremendous number of stories out there.
It's clear that an effective gratitude practice
has to be repeated from time to time.
So what I would not suggest is that we
build a protocol in which you are constantly foraging for inspirational stories over and over again, you know, social media and the internet are replete with those.
That's not going to be a very potent
protocol or tool because the most potent protocol or tool for gratitude is going to be one that you repeat over and over
again.
Rather the most effective protocol or tool is going to be either to think
into and you could write this out if you
like. But think into when somebody was thankful for something that you did
and really start to think about how you felt in receiving that gratitude
or and or I should say
imagining or thinking about deeply, the emotional experience of somebody
else receiving help.
Now, what narrative you
select is going to be very dependent on you and your taste. It's going to be very dependent on what resonates with you.
But again, I want to emphasize that the story that you select does not have to have any semblance to your own
life experience. It's just about what happens to move you.
And so the way that one could do
this and actually I've started this practice.
For myself on the basis of the learnings, I've had in the last few weeks around preparing for this episode,
is to find a story that's particularly meaningful for you. And then to just take some short notes, bullet point notes about maybe list out for
instance, on a just a small sheet of paper or in your phone. If that's your preference
just list out. For instance. You know what,
the struggle
was,
what the help was. And
something about how that impacts you emotionally.
Okay,
this is something just for you. You don't have to share it with anybody that kind of shorthand
list of bullet point, notes serves as your shorthand, for getting into this
mode that we're calling gratitude and
actually closely mimics. A lot of what
was done in these various studies
because even though the studies I've talked about up until now we're really focused on
what we call a cute Imaging studies where someone watched a story or receive gratitude while the experiment was done and then that's it. One and done.
There are other studies.
Looking at gratitude in this context, over many weeks up to six weeks. And what
one observes is that. There's so called neuroplasticity of these
circuits, neuroplasticity is the brain and nervous, systems ability to change in response to
experience. And that these neural circuits start developing a familiarity with the narrative. So that, for instance. Let's say, you sit
down the first time, you've found a story that you find particularly compelling, you've written down, a few notes, about what that story is just to
remind you and then you read those out and you
You think into the richness of that experience that receiving of gratitude or if
you prefer you're doing the protocol where you're thinking about, when someone was deeply grateful or was great, genuinely grateful to
you that you're thinking about that, the neural circuits become activated
more easily with each subsequent, repeat of the practice.
Now, this could be done, literally, for one minute or
two minutes or three
minutes. This is not an
extensively long practice.
And that's another beauty of gratitude
practices is that they have these outsize positive.
So many aspects of our physiology.
But these are very short
practices. They're the kind of thing that you can do walking to your car. They're kind of thing. You can just sit down for a minute and set a timer and and do
because they are really about changing your state
of mind and body. And if you have an experience of receiving gratitude or a story, that's very potent for
you. It becomes a sort of shortcut
into the Gratitude Network, these Pro social networks,
meaning the activation of these circuits becomes almost instantaneous and that's very different than a lot of other practices out there, you know.
I'm not aware of any meditation practices, for
instance, that you can do only a few times and then within, you know, a week or so. You just have to do them for one minute, you immediately drop into the kind of optimal state. That that meditation practice is designed to
create. There are some shorter meditation practices that are very potent and very effective like that. But gratitude and the circuits associated with it appear to be, especially plastic, meaning, especially prone to being able to be triggered in the good sense of the word triggered. Just bye.
Simply reminding yourself of this particular narrative. Now, there's another very clear and positive effect of
using this narrative or story based approach to a gratitude practice. And that's what story does for our physiology
earlier in the episode. I mentioned this really incredible study in which listening to a story
coordinated, the heart rate of different
individuals and change literally change the way that their heart was beating the
Title of this ID is conscious processing of narrative. Stimuli synchronizes, heart rate between individuals.
The first author is Perez again, published in cell
reports. So, Press Journal, excellent journal. And it's a really elegant study. They looked at
instantaneous heart rate, they use electrocardiogram to do that, which is simply a way to look at heart. Beats with very fine Precision.
They also looked at the
breathing of subjects as they listened to the stories,
some of you may know that breathing and heart rate are
actually linked to one another
Other in a really interesting way,
the simple way to put it is that when you inhale your heart rate speeds up a little bit, and when you
exhale, your heart rate slows down, and this is because of the movement of the diaphragm in, in your thoracic cavity, and the Physicians and medical types call this
respiratory, sinus arrhythmia. There's a mechanism there, we could get into, but I don't want to
distract us from the main theme here. So just remember when you inhale, your heart rate speeds up and when you exhale, your heart rate
slows down, they looked at breathing.
They looked at heart rate in different individuals and listening to a story produced. Very consistent
gaps between the heart rates of the people who are listening
different individuals in the study who were not located in the same
place when they listen to the story. Listen to the story in different times, different days entirely had very similar heartbeat patterns listening to this story. What
this means for your gratitude.
Is that having a story that you can return to over and over again? Even if it's not the
entire story, you're just using the shorthand bullet point, version of your story will
create a perceptible and real shift in your heartbeat and in your breathing and actually that's been demonstrated over and over
now that an effective
gratitude practice is
one that can rapidly shift not just the activation of these circuits in your brain for pro-social
behaviors, but also
activation of particular
circuits in your heart and in your lungs and the other organs of your
body, such that you can get into a
reproducible state of gratitude each time.
So an important component here is that there be some element of story. Again, you don't
have to listen to or read or think about the entire story start to finish in order to extract these
benefits and that it be the same
story over and over
and as a consequence, that's
going to shift your physiology and
To presumably a more
relaxed State because typically that's the one that's associated with gratitude.
Although activation of these gratitude circuits has also been shown to
create sense of awe or sense of Joy. There are few studies
looking at and kind of
parsing the difference between gratitude and joy, I was able to find a few studies about
that but in general, they tend to the neural circuits that are activated tend
to overlap quite a lot with those that create a sense of gratitude so we don't want to split hairs.
There's unnecessarily there. The
key thing is that you want to use the same story. Even if it's if it's your own experience or somebody
else's and keep coming back to it over and over again, that makes it a very potent
tool that you can get a tremendous amount of benefit from with
even as short as 60 seconds of practice. Earlier. I talked about how you
can't lie to yourself and say, you know, I'm so grateful for this
thing that I actually hate.
And in a moment. I'm going to tell you about some scientific data, that proves the
Statement I made is true and that you can't
just lie to yourself and derive the benefits of a gratitude practice.
The data are also going to point to the fact that if you are
giving gratitude not just receiving it by giving gratitude that too has to be genuine.
There's a really interesting studies published in
scientific reports, which is a nature research journal.
The title of it is neural responses to intention and benefit appraisal are critical in distinguishing gratitude and
Joy. It's a somewhat complicated study. So I'm just going to hit on some of the high points. But basically what they did is they use functional magnetic resonance imaging so
they could look at brain circuitry activation with very high precision
and they had people receiving money in this
in the context of this
experiment and they had some knowledge as to whether or not the money that they were receiving was given to them wholeheartedly or
reluctantly and there were a number of different
variables in a study.
Cluding, how much money was given. So in some
cases it was very little and other cases. It was modest. And other cases, it was a
lot more and they also varied the extent to which The
Giver of the money that they called the benefactor was doing
it. Wholeheartedly or
seem to be doing it somewhat reluctantly
and they looked at whether or not the sense of gratitude, scaled with the amount of money received and or the intention of the benefactor whether or not the person giving the money was doing.
Dang
it wholeheartedly or
reluctantly and what's remarkable is that while the amount of money given was a strong component in whether or not somebody felt
gratitude that they had received gratitude, which makes sense. You know, the amount of money is,
is some some Metric of whether or not.
Somebody feels thanked,
the stronger variable, the bigger impact came from whether or not the person, giving the money was giving it with a whole heart.
Intention and not a reluctant intention. And of course, there was an interaction where the best circumstance, of course, is where the person received a lot of money from somebody who wholeheartedly wanted to give them a lot of money
and they did every derivation of this. But this is an important. This tells us many things that extend Way Beyond
gratitude practices, which is
that genuine. Thanks, are
what count? Okay, we could probably presume that but receiving genuine. Thanks is also
so a strong variable in determining whether or not we experience real gratitude
or whether or not it's empty, regardless of the size of a gift. So this constrains our gratitude practice is somewhat but I think in an interesting and important way, you can't make this stuff up. You can't tell yourself that an
experience was great or that,
you know, I got a lot of money and therefore
it Justified it even though, you know, I think that they give it to me, reluctantly or my boss hates me, but they gave me a raise.
That stuff stings, for all the right reasons because there are circuits in our brain and body that are oriented towards these pro-social interactions. And in some sense, what we are looking for,
as a species, what these circuits want, if you will,
is to receive things from people that are giving them
wholeheartedly. And that tells us that if we are
The Giver that we better be giving wholeheartedly or
we are undermining the sense of gratitude that someone is going to receive from us.
So we are gradually building up.
Up, the ultimate gratitude practice
based on the variety of scientific literature that's out there.
And I know that many people are probably interested in developing a
gratitude practice that has long-lasting maybe even permanent positive effects on their neural circuitry.
So with that in mind, I want to turn our attention to a really interesting study. It's entitled effects of gratitude, meditation on neural network functional connectivity,
and brain heart coupling and to make a long
Or a short and a lot simpler than that
title. Repeated gratitude practice changes the way that your brain circuits work
and it also changes the way in which your heart and your brain interact. You're familiar with the fact that your brain controls your heart because you could be stressed about something that's perceived with your brain. And then your heart rate will speed up. You probably also familiar with the fact that if your heart rate speeds up for some reason or no reason, you're probably thinking well what's making my heart rate speed up be? That's because they the brain and the heart are
Reciprocally in innervated, as we say they're talking to one another. In. Both directions is a two-way Highway.
This study looked at changes in so-called functional connectivity within the brain and between the brain and the Heart in response to gratitude practices. And as a control that used what I
think is very interesting. A resentment intervention. I think resentment is a an apt control in quite different than
gratitude to make a long story short. What they found. Is that a
Heated, gratitude practice could change the resting state functional connectivity in emotion and motivation
related brain
regions. If I haven't mentioned a strong enough incentive for doing a regular
gratitude practice until now
this is definitely the one to pay attention to because what they found was a regular gratitude practice, could shift the functional connectivity of
emotion Pathways in ways that made anxiety and fear, circuits, less likely to be active.
And
And circuits for feelings of well-being,
but also motivation to be much more active.
I find that remarkable and important because a number of people struggle with issues of motivation. A lot of people who are highly
motivated, also have issues with anxiety
and fear. And so, this study really points to the fact that it's
a twofer. If you have a good gratitude practice and you repeat it regularly,
you reduce the
fear anxiety circuits you
Increase the efficacy of
the positive emotion,
feel good circuits and
the circuits associated with motivation and pursuit are actually enhanced as well. So that's very strong incentive to have a gratitude practice in one that you use, regularly will talk about how regularly in just a moment.
I don't want to go into too many details of the study.
Although we will put a reference to it. If you like it includes a
lot of fmri data Imaging data of
different brain areas, many many tables and examples of matrices of before
After gratitude after resentment Etc. You do indeed have circuits in your brain for resentment, whether you like it or not, we all do and some people just they was circuits are more robust than others.
But the remarkable thing is one can shift
these circuits in the direction that I think most people would like, which is more sense of well-being, and motivation and less resentment and
fear. Literally. And what's really cool about this study. Also is that the interventions are only
five minutes
long?
It's incredible, five minutes long. And so as we start to
build out our ideal gratitude practice, we know that it has to have certain features. First of all, it has to be
grounded in a story. Probably a story that you've heard in its entirety at
least once but then you can have a shorthand version. The Soco bullet points that I talked about before that allow you to drop into that story or the emotional associations with that story. So you don't have to listen to the whole story. Each time.
That story should be one in which you are.
Lee being thanked for something and it made you
feel good or it could be a story about someone else
genuinely expressing. Thanks. Okay, based on this description of the Gratitude practices that we talked about earlier.
Your gratitude practice can be very brief. I mean can it be as brief as one minute 60
seconds or five minutes which still seems very brief to me. Although in these studies. They were getting these really major effects just from five minutes of gratitude practice
some of these papers.
As involve people doing some focusing on their breathing and calming themselves as they go into the Gratitude practice, but that's within the five
minute block. So if you decide that you're going to do a gratitude practice that involves first, you know, I don't know, doing some calming breathing Excel emphasize breathing, for instance, or physiological sighs things. I've talked about before on this podcast, that can help calm you down because they have a lot of exhales, which, you know, slows, your heart rate down and then doing your gratitude practice. That's fine. It's actually not.
Necessary, but a lot of these studies used that.
I think once a narrative
has been set, you've heard the story and it has meaning for you or you have a recollection of a story where you were genuinely. Thank
then I think just 60 seconds or maybe 120 seconds
should be
sufficient. Then the question becomes how
often to repeat this gratitude practice.
That's not exactly clear from the existing literature. I can't point to any one study that says
five times a week or four times a week. So I'm going to
throw out a number.
Number
which is three times a
week and then people will ask. Well, when should I do that?
Gratitude practice, and I'll tell you what, I tell
most everybody about most every practice with a few exceptions, which is the best time of day to do this, practice is when you first wake up in the morning
or before you go to sleep at night or anytime of day.
So we've talked about some of the neural circuitry
changes associated with a regular gratitude practice
and I should mention that there's an
additional neural circuitry.
Shift that occurs. It relates to a structure that
I mentioned just briefly earlier, which is the
so-called ACC or anterior,
cingulate cortex. This is an area of the brain that has several functions, but more and more data are
pointing to the fact that the ACC is actually involved in
empathy and is involved in understanding the emotional states
of others in general. Even if it doesn't evoke a sense of empathy
and there are several studies that point to the fact that in humans
who have a regular gratitude practice, the ACC becomes more
Robustly engaged. Even with these very brief. Gratitude practices. We actually have a project in our lab. This is actually done in animal models with where animals, observe other animals experiencing
certain emotional states. And one of the brain areas that
we've identified as important for this. It's kind of a primordial form of empathy because we really don't know what these mice are thinking, we work on humans. In the case, where we work on humans, of course, we asked them and they tell us what they
They're thinking with the my sweet. We asked them but they don't tell us much of anything interesting. Instead. We measure a number
of physiological signals. But the important point is that the the ACC,
the anterior, cingulate
cortex seems to be an important hub for
the
generation and execution of empathy, as it relates to feelings and
empathic behaviors altruistic behaviors of animals, helping animals, and humans, helping other humans. We see this in the animal models. We see this in humans. So
if you want to be a more empathic person,
Personal gratitude practice is also going to
be very effective for that. It appears,
especially using this
narrative type approach where you are using someone else's Narrative of receiving gratitude as a way to tap into your own sense of gratitude.
Thus far. We've mainly talked
about the effects of gratitude on neural circuit activation and changes
a little bit about some of the changes that are happening in terms of the body, heart rate and breathing and so forth, but we haven't talked a lot yet about the changes in health metrics.
In things like inflammation or reductions in inflammation
and Immunity and things of
that sort.
So, with that in mind, I'd like to describe the results of a really interesting. Recent study, that was published in the journal, brain, behavior. And Immunity. This was published 2021. The title of this of the study is exploring neural mechanisms of the health benefits of gratitude in women, a randomized control trial. The first author is Haslett. And basically, what this paper showed was that
Women who had a regular gratitude practice of the
sort that we've been talking about up. Until now showed
reductions in amygdala,
activity of brain areas, associated with threat detection, a intimate. Part of the fear Network in the brain. So
reductions in amygdala activation and large reductions in the production of something called tnf-alpha tumor. Necrosis, Factor
Alpha and il-6 interleukin 6.
Now, if you happen to
Listen to the episode that I did on activating your
immune system and immune function, you heard about
tnf-alpha and il-6 tnf-alpha and
il-6 are inflammatory. Cytokines. These are chemicals that exist in your body and that are released from cells when there is
damage or kind of a systemic stress, when your system is in
duress and in the short term, they can be beneficial. They can call in signals for wound healing and repair of cells Etc. But
But you don't want tnf-alpha and
il-6 levels to be too high and you don't want those levels to be up for too long.
And so, this study is really nice because they showed significant effects in reducing tnf-alpha and il-6 in response to
a gratitude practice and because they
also observed reductions in amygdala activation.
This area associated with threat detection and fear. It's likely
and I should emphasize likely because I don't know that the
direction of the effect is that there are neural circuit changes which in turn shift, the degree
to, which these inflammatory cytokines are released in the body,
although for all I know it could be the other way to it could be that having your gratitude practice
shift something about heart rate and breathing which in turn shifts the or lowers the amount of tnf-alpha and il-6 and that in turn reduces activation of the amygdala. We don't really
The direction of the effect, the
effect scuse me, but if I had to speculate,
I would speculate that it was a shift in neural circuitry that led to a change in the circuits of the body.
And another interesting aspect of this study is that the reductions in
amygdala activation, and the reductions and tnf-alpha and il-6 were very rapid. They
occurred almost
immediately after the Gratitude practice was
completed. And even though that study was performed exclusively on female subjects based on the biology and circuitry of the mmm.
Abdullah and the biology of tnf-alpha and il-6 Performing this inflammatory role in both men and women. I don't see any reason why the results of that study wouldn't pertain to both men and women. So what about the chemistry associated with gratitude
are there certain chemicals in our brain or that we could enhance in our brain that would
enhance our gratitude
practice indeed there are and earlier. I mentioned the
chemical the neuromodulator serotonin as having a powerful influence.
The activation of neural circuits associate with pro-social behaviors and gratitude and other sort of
feel good behaviors to make a long story, short neuromodulators, like, dopamine and epinephrine and norepinephrine. Tend to place us into a state
of extra reception, meaning a state of observing things and focusing on things outside the immediate reach of our body and confines of our skin. They tend to put us in pursuit or in thinking about things out in the future or out away from
Our physical body,
whereas the neuromodulator serotonin, and some of the associated Pathways like oxytocin and other neurochemicals tend to, I want to emphasize tend to be associated with states that are about contentment with what we have within the
confines of our body, and our immediate experience. So they're not so much about Pursuit. But about gratitude and about appreciation for what we already have.
I'd be remiss if I didn't therefore point out, that if one were to shift their chemistry toward having
higher levels of Serotonin, you would buy all logic, experience, heightened levels of gratitude
and indeed some people do this. They will take compounds that increase serotonin. There are a number of compounds out there. As you know, I'm certainly not suggesting people do that. A couple of the supplement based legal over-the-counter approaches to, this are things like 5-HTP,
which is
a precursor to
serotonin. Some people will take 5-HTP to
try and enhance their sleep. I'm not a fan of doing that.
Personally. I've talked about this in the Sleep episode, but the estate that we call Sleep has a very
complex and important architecture as it relates to neurochemicals and by
taking serotonin by supplement or by stimulating serotonin,
released by supplement with 5-HTP or with tryptophan, which is an amino acid precursor to to
serotonin one can run into the
Of disrupting, the normal architecture of sleep cycles throughout the night. I experienced that as if I've taken 5-HTP or tryptophan. I fall asleep, very deeply but then, I wake up three hours later and I can't fall asleep at all. And actually it sometimes even messes up, my sleep, the subsequent night. Some people are not so sensitive to 5-HTP and tryptophan and they actually really like it. So again, you have to talk to your doctor decide. What's right for you. You're responsible for your health, not me and you have to determine what works for you. Everyone slightly individual, but
one could imagine enhancing.
They're amount of serotonin in their brain and body by taking 5-HTP or tryptophan before gratitude practice. That seems a little bit extreme given that. The Gratitude practice is only about a minute to five minutes long on a regular basis,
but there may be instances in which you're really
trying to amplify these circuitry in the brain and body that are associated with gratitude. And therefore, that might be something that you want to explore.
There's a new compound that's out there a legal over-the-counter compound.
At least it's legal in the United States. I don't know about overseas.
And that's a compound called Cana Ka NN a, it's an interesting compound. It goes by another name as well, which is,
and I'm going to mispronounce this, and I apologize. This is Celeste
ksham tortosa home. Please see our time
stamps. If you want to see the spelling of that, but I'll just
call it Conifer by its other name. For short. It's an herb that is traditionally chewed prior to stressing
Endeavors as how its described on an examined.
Calm. But I looked at some of the studies on this, it's kind of interesting. It very likely increases the amount of serotonin in the body and pretty potent lie. It is generally taken in dosages of anywhere from 25 to 50 milligrams. And it creates a kind of a
pro-social gratitude enhancing where I should say. Gratitude circuitry pro-social, neural circuitry enhancing
effect because of the ways that
it interacts with the serotonergic
pathways.
The brain. So it also has another name and sometimes called the Zen
bronzini EMB
Rin. Again. I'm not suggesting that people run out and take this stuff. It's but there is an emerging practice of people. Using zember insolation
tortosa. Mm also called conic AA and na
in order to enhance the states that are
about
comfort and pleasure with
what one has in their immediate sphere of experience.
And so one could imagine
Imagine
if it's safe for you and right, for you and legal where you live in, enhancing serotonin by taking Khanna and then doing your gratitude practice. What's the logic behind that?
Well, you know, oftentimes, we hear about supplements and pharmacology for
quote unquote increasing plasticity or opening plasticity. Do you know if I had a dollar for every time someone said
I hear that such and such opens plasticity. Well, indeed, there are
molecules associated with the thing that we call neuro plasticity.
But neuroplasticity is not an
event. It's a process, meaning it has many many steps. It occurs during wakefulness, its Consolidated during sleep and so
forth, taking a substance that increases a
neurochemical in your brain
will likely provided. It's the
right substance and it's the right practice will likely enhance the amplitude or the intensity of that practice and make it a more potent form of inducing. Neuroplasticity, meaning, it will create longer lasting.
Testing or more robust brain changes than if one had an increased their chemistry in this Farmer Way, this way of taking something,
but that doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't get to the very same place without it with by simply doing
slightly longer gratitude, practice or putting a little bit more mental effort into
it. That said, I think the future of
neuroplasticity really resides in
not just one approach, not just neurochemistry,
and taking substances to increase in neural plasticity. Not just behavioral practice.
To try and increase in neural plasticity. Not just
brain machine interfaces
or tour devices to increase in neural plasticity, but rather the convergence of
multiple tools, so you could imagine enhancing serotonergic transmission, as we say in the brain,
using something like Cana combined with a gratitude practice in the not too distant future. This will probably also be combined with some sort of non-invasive device to stimulate the prefrontal cortex. At the same time, please don't do that. Recreationally those devices are for clinical use only currently.
But I think you start to get the idea. So for those of you that are a little bit more exploratory and you want
to go and do some reading on this, I thought you might find a Khanna. Interesting. I certainly
did. There are a number of studies that will pop up on PubMed. I recommend
using examine.com as you're jumping
off point. There are
some decent studies that they described in their so-called human effect Matrix. So those are studies done on humans
and the main effects that that are that have been documented in the scientific literature are minor, but significant increases in cognition executive.
Executive function is something that's also associated with
prefrontal, cortex and reductions in
anxiety. And that seems to be a common theme
that we're seeing again. And again, you saw this in the study, the trial, where Saul reductions in tnf-alpha, and reductions in amygdala Activation, so rude, which would ostensibly lead to reductions in anxiety.
You're seeing increases in
activity, in brain networks, that are associated with feelings of well-being. So
again, back to that kind of push, pull of defensive anxiety, and fear, like circuitry in the brain.
Being antagonistic. As we say, to the circuits that are associated with pro-social feeling good, receiving good
feelings, type, circuitry, and events in life.
So, as you now know, there is a lot of science
about how gratitude can positively impact. Neural circuits in the brain, anti inflammatory markers in the body, brain, heart breathing
coordination, and on, and on and
on,
I'd like to just highlight the key elements of
the most effective at least a my knowledge gratitude practice.
And when I say the most effective what I'm doing is I'm gleaning from the scientific studies. I was able to
find and combining the various findings of those studies
into what I think is a very practical
and what should certainly be a very effective gratitude practice for all the positive effects that we described.
First of all
that gratitude practice has to be grounded in a narrative. Meaning a story. You
don't have to recite or hear that story. Every single
time. You do the Gratitude practice.
But you have to know what that story was. And what? The Gratitude practice references back to.
Second of all, that story can be one of you, receiving genuine. Thanks, and the key
elements. They are, are that
you are the one receiving, the thanks the Gratitude and that it's been given to you.
Genuinely wholeheartedly,
or it can be a story of you. Observing someone else receiving. Thanks.
Expressing. Thanks. And that has to be a genuine interaction as well, both between the giver and the receiver.
So those are the first three elements. What I recommend would be after you've established the
story that you want to use for your gratitude practice,
that you write down three or four, simple bullet points that can serve, as Salient reminders of that
story for you. It will serve as kind of a queue for that story without having to listen to, or
Talk out the entire story. I would
recommend writing down something about the state that you or the other person were in before. They received the Gratitude, the state that you were in or that the person was in after they receive the Gratitude and any other elements that lend some sort of emotional
weight or tone to the story. This could be three pages of text if you like, or it could just be a couple of bullet
points. I don't think it really matters. The important thing is that it's embedded in your memory and that it's really associated with this.
Anyone exchange of thanks
and the receivable of
thanks. I think those are the key elements.
And then it's very simple. The entire practice involves reading off these bullet points as a cue to your nervous system
of the sense of gratitude. And then for about one minute, which is a trivial amount of time if you really think about it or
maybe two minutes, or if you're really ambitious up to 5 minutes of just really feeling into that genuine
experience of having received gratitude, or
Observed, someone else, receiving gratitude.
And then, in terms of frequency, think A good rule of thumb would be to do that about three times a week. And the time
of day doesn't really matter. I can't see why there would be any so called circadian
effects of this. I know some people like to
do a gratitude practice before they go to sleep
at night. I don't see any problem with doing this before you go to sleep at night. I also don't see any problem with you doing this on your lunch
break or mid-morning, or first thing in the morning. I can't see any logic for placing.
Any one time of day and not another. So I think the most important thing is that you do it at least three times a
week. And as mentioned before, it's very very brief. So there are very
few barriers of to entry for doing this.
So if we just take a step back
from this protocol and compare it to what's typically out there in the literature which is, you know, make a list of
all the things you're thankful for recite in your mind. All the things you're thankful for count your
blessings. So, I think everybody should be counting Their Blessings all the time. There's always something to be thankful for but in
terms of
Of a
scientifically grounded. Gratitude practice that is also scientifically demonstrated
to shift your
physiology at the level of your immune system and your neural circuitry reducing anxiety, increasing motivation.
All these wonderful things that so many of us are chasing all the time as goals. I think, a gratitude practice reveals itself to be an immensely powerful tool
for any and all of us to use and that should
come as no surprise because these pro-social circuits, these circuits for
gratitude.
You'd are not a recent phenomenon.
Discussions about gratitude date. Back hundreds. If not thousands of years we've done today is to
take the modern science, right up until 2021
and to really
distill from that
the neuroimaging data, the neurochemistry, the various aspects of brain body connectivity. Look at the protocols. Take various subject group. Some were
done in women somewhere done in between two individuals. Some we're done with brain Imaging all the, all the very various changes on a theme.
That allow us to point to a simple
but very effective protocol that certainly we could
all use around Thanksgiving. But you know Thanksgiving is just but one day
throughout the entire year, of course, I
personally have been using a gratitude protocol for the
last several years, but that protocol was based on my
ignorance really about the
scientific literature and was mainly based on what I had heard out there in the internet, which is that I should list out, or think about or, or
Verbally, recite the things that I'm grateful for
sort of protocol that we arrived at today. Based on the scientific literature is distinctly different from that. And as a consequence, I've started to script out
a protocol identical to the one. I just
described, and I intend to use that going forward, if you're learning from, and, or
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