Jef­frey Gonce, a Psy­chol­ogy teacher at Red Land High School (West Shore School Dis­trict, PA) just asked his stu­dents to “com­plete a project describ­ing a recent brain (or genetic) study that affects behav­ior.”  The stu­dents could opt to post their arti­cles online, and Jef­frey was kind enough to send us a link to read the results.

We enjoyed the over­all level of the essays (you can read them all here), and truly enjoyed read­ing a beau­ti­ful, well-researched and bet­ter writ­ten essay by Alexan­dra M, 15. Which, inci­den­tally, quotes from one of our favourite pop­u­lar sci­ence books on the brain, John Ratey’s A User’s Guide to the Brain.

Enjoy!

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March 2, 2007

Alexan­dra M

It’s Christ­mas morn­ing, and your brother rushes down­stairs to see what “Santa” brought him. The morn­ing goes by in a flurry of col­or­ful wrap­ping paper and stringy rib­bons until all that’s left is a big present in the cen­ter of your brother’s lap. The present that “Santa” brought him. As he rips open the paper, “Santa’s” chest swells with pride, he feels good and happy. As the brother runs around scream­ing about his new remote con­trolled F-14 Tom­cat, “Santa” laughs and cleans up. But why did he feel that way? He had maybe one to every five presents that his brother received. Why? Why does “Santa” not feel jeal­ous? Researchers have found that giv­ing a present to another being actu­ally feels bet­ter than receiv­ing the gift. They used an fMRI and stud­ied nine­teen peo­ple play a game and either received or donated money that they won. The brain, more impor­tantly, our unique frontal lobes, are evolv­ing quicker due to giv­ing from our hearts to other beings. Jor­dan Graf­man, the leader of this happy project, asked nine­teen fit vol­un­teers to par­tic­i­pate in a com­puter game while hav­ing their brains scanned by an fMRI. An fMRI is a machine that scans the brain for increased blood flow to the dif­fer­ent blood ves­sels that accom­pany brain usage. The game gave out cash rewards and at the same time asked for dona­tions to char­i­ties. They saw, because of the fMRI, that the struc­tures that lit up when peo­ple received money were the ones that released Dopamine. Dopamine is a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter that asso­ciates with hap­pi­ness and reward. “Dopamine may be the link between reward­ing sen­sa­tions of plea­sure and long term mem­ory” (Ratey). But the inter­est­ing thing was that when some­one gave to a char­ity, the same places lit up and were more stim­u­lated then when peo­ple receive rewards. This also acti­vated a cer­tain type of neu­ro­trans­mit­ter. A neu­ro­trans­mit­ter is a chem­i­cal mes­sen­ger from one neu­ron to another. This neu­ro­trans­mit­ter is known as Oxy­tocin. Oxy­tocin is a “cud­dle” neu­ro­trans­mit­ter found every­where. “…Oxy­tocin is the attach­ment phase between the male and female” (Ratey). They found that the activ­ity in the pre­frontal cor­tex, some­thing com­pletely unique to the human race, was busier when peo­ple made very large dona­tions. The pre­frontal cor­tex is the part of the brain that is involved in rea­son­ing and decision-making. The most sig­nif­i­cant part of the research was that they fig­ured out that donat­ing is a learned behav­ior. “Work­ing mem­ory is a sig­nif­i­cant part of the exec­u­tive func­tion­ing of the pre­frontal cor­tex” (Ratey). “Tis bet­ter to give than receive” is one of the most famous verses in the Chris­t­ian New Tes­ta­ment, and now it has been proven. Jor­dan Graf­man and his team of sci­en­tists have found that giv­ing a present to another being actu­ally feels bet­ter than receiv­ing a gift from one. Giv­ing a gift acti­vates your Dopamine and Oxy­tocin releasers, and prefrontal/frontal lobes and even evolves some of these areas. In the future, we could see if how much we give makes a dif­fer­ence in how much Dopamine or Oxy­tocin is released into our bod­ies. We could learn to share in a way that would make every­one feel as happy as giv­ing or receiv­ing the gift.

Bib­li­og­ra­phy

o Gramza, Joyce. “Tis Bet­ter to Give than Receive.” Sci­en­Cen­tral Video. 10/17/2006 NINDS and NIH. 2/20/2007

o Ratey, John J. A User’s Guide to the Brain. New York: Vin­tage Books, Copy­right 1994.

Any sug­ges­tions or feed­back for Jef­frey and Alexandra?

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