You’re a fanatical football fan and your team just eked out a big win. You’re elated. Then, almost as quickly, you lose that feeling — for no apparent reason — since your team, at least in this hypothetical scenario, consistently wins. Or maybe you don’t really care for football, and instead you just had an amazing meal, and, like the taste of it, you savor the emotions surrounding the experience not only moments afterward but for hours, even days.
Why is it that some people can savor positive emotions longer than others? This seemingly minor question could have big implications for a person’s mental well-being, according to previous research, since the inability to sustain positive moods like joy is associated with psychological issues like depression. To better understand why some people savor emotions longer, Aaron Heller, lead author of a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in July, peeked inside the brains of certain study participants, using fMRI scanning technology. The research was conducted at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, where Heller is a former graduate student.
Currently an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami in Florida, Heller and fellow researchers studied more than 100 people outside the lab, who — prompted by cellphone text messages — had to guess whether the next number a computer chose would be higher or lower than five. Those who guessed correctly won money, while those who guessed incorrectly didn’t win anything. Participants then answered questions about how they felt, and 40 of those individuals came into the lab to play a similar game, while their brains were scanned. Researchers gauged “emotional reactivity,” or how much their moods changed in response to winning games, Heller says.
Researchers looked at how big changes in real-world emotion translated to brain activity in the lab. The study found that participants with more persistent activation in the ventral striatum, which functions as part of the brain’s reward center, measured over relatively short periods of time, even seconds — also reported sustaining positive emotions for longer; minutes or hours after winning games. Previous research has shown the same kind of brain activity to be associated with mental well-being.
The study aims to improve the understanding of how what happens in the brain’s neural circuitry can influence peoples’ emotional lives and, conversely, how that understanding might inform future interventions. “Long term, if we understand how the brain permits us to ruminate or to savor, we may be able to improve psychotherapeutic treatments by using cellphone technology, and intervene in between therapy sessions to facilitate improvements, for example, in depression and anxiety,” Heller says.
The research wasn’t conducted on people selected for mental illness, nor was it designed to test particular treatments, however, and Heller is quick to point out that more study is needed. Still, Suzette Glasner-Edwards, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychiatry at UCLA, who was not involved in the study, says the research makes strides in evaluating the biological basis for how we feel. “It’s a very exciting first step in the direction of understanding how laboratory-based assessments of emotion and neural circuitry relate to experiences in the real world and the way people experience emotion,” she says.
Heller notes that how we experience emotions is based on both our genetics and our life experiences. “Basically that has laid down certain biological patterns that make it easier for one person to sustain positive emotions than it is for another,” he says. But emerging research on brain plasticity shows it may be possible to cherish that sunset longer, even for those who may feel like they’re in an emotional rut. “The brain is plastic, and through choices and experiences we can become better at savoring or sustaining positive emotions, or recovering from things like anxiety and depression,” he says.
Therapy, exercise or meditation, among other activities, may all facilitate such change, experts say — and Glasner-Edwards explains that understanding more about how individuals experience emotion may lead to more individualized treatments and help determine how often someone needs to come in for therapy. She adds that an increasing focus on mindfulness may also help a person better recognize and address how they’re feeling: “That is one of the approaches that encourages people to be aware of their emotions,” she says.
She notes that even positive emotions can trigger unhealthy behaviors in some, such as drug abuse. It’s better to be mindful of our emotions and how they impact us, and work to change unhealthy thought patterns. “With cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the most widely used treatment approaches for depression, there’s a great focus on identifying errors in thinking, or irrational ways of thinking, and several of those errors in thinking have to do with being overly focused on negative aspects of things,” she says.
Glasner-Edwards says that duration of positive emotions is just one component of how we experience emotions, and emphasizes the importance of being aware of the range of emotions we experience. She also notes that those struggling with mental health issues may need medication and/or therapy to change neural pathways that influence how we experience emotions. Generally speaking, though, “A person who is able to hang onto more positive ideas and experiences that instill hope and excitement and just satisfaction about life,” she says, “that’s a person who’s going to have a greater quality of life.”
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Feel-Good Science: Why Some People Savor Positive Emotions Longer originally appeared on usnews.com
