Mental & Emotional Health

The Science of Savoring Positive Emotions

Savoring a beautiful sunset and the positive emotions associated with it can contribute to improved well-being, according to research. But why and how are some people better than others in keeping the feeling alive? That’s what the authors of a study published in July 2015 in The Journal of Neuroscience set out to discover.

A release from the University of Wisconsin-Madison quotes Aaron Heller, former graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center and current assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, as saying, “It’s important to consider not just how much emotion you experience, but also how long these emotions persist. We’re looking at how one person can savor a great deal from that beautiful sunset or a memorable meal, but how another person who might be susceptible to depression can’t savor that sunset and those positive emotions subside quickly.”

The findings suggest that the duration of activity in specific circuits of the brain, even over relatively short periods of time such as seconds, can predict the persistence of a person’s positive emotion minutes and hours later. The results and the study’s unique design contribute to a growing understanding of how mental disorders such as depression might be manifested in the brain. Depression affects more than 350 million people globally, according to the World Health Organization.

The release notes that until now, researchers have examined savoring and the impact of emotions on individuals either in the laboratory or in a real-world setting, but not in both with the same people and prompts. Heller says the study is one of the first of its kind to take the same experiment from the lab into the field while linking emotion responses in both settings to neural activity in the brain.

Over the course of the study, roughly 100 adult participants played a short guessing game and answered questions about their emotions when prompted by a smartphone over a 10-day period. The guessing game provided participants with the following instructions: “The computer chose the number 5. Please guess whether the next number will be higher or lower than 5.”

Participants would win money or win nothing based on their response. Winning was intended to give people bursts of positive emotion, while not winning was intended to create negative feelings. In addition, Heller and colleagues wanted to learn how long these emotions lingered after the game, so they asked a series of questions on average every 15 minutes afterward to get a sense of whether people were savoring positive or negative emotion — or neither.

The same participants played the guessing game while scientists collected functional MRI scans of their brains during the game. Individuals with more persistent activation in the part of their brain associated with reward and reward learning — called the ventral striatum — reported positive emotion that was sustained for longer periods of time after the game. The magnitude of activation in another area of the brain responsible for executive functioning, the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, predicted how much a person’s positive emotion increased immediately following a reward.

Richard Davidson, senior author of the paper and founder of CIHM, says the neural pattern observed in the new study, particularly in the ventral striatum, has also predicted higher levels of well-being in previous studies. He adds that practices such as “loving kindness” and compassion toward others, which aim to cultivate certain forms of positive emotion, might help to increase savoring.

“The methodological innovations showcased in this study can be applied to study the impact of simple forms of meditation on both reports of sustained positive emotion sampled in real-world contexts as well as sustained ventral striatal activation measured in the laboratory,” he says.

Heller emphasizes that in order to draw larger conclusions, the research needs to be replicated and taken in new directions to include negative emotion, too, but notes that the work creates opportunities to explore the “dose” or amount of exposure to a positive experience that can yield lasting positive emotions.

“Most patients spend only one hour per week in psychotherapy. That’s less than 1 percent of their waking time, so the fact that anything changes at all is pretty remarkable,” he says. “The idea is if we can use cell phone technology to provide similar prompts to help people sustain positive emotion throughout the week, we may be able to create faster changes in brain networks that give rise to improved mood.”

you may also like

Recipes We

Khela88

Fancywin

Jita Ace

Betjili

https://betvisa1.org/

jeetbuzz লগইন

jeetwin app

baji999

winbuzz

betvisa login

winbuzz

six6s

babu88

marvelbet

krikya

mostplay

4rabet

leonbet

pin up

mostbet

all rummy app

Fastwin

Jitawin

R777

Bhaggo

PBC88

Winbdt

Crickex

Betjee

Glory Casino

Jita Bet

Melbet

Jwin7

Jita Ace

Krikya

Six6s

Betjili

Mostplay

Jeetbuzz

Jeetwin

Mostbet

Baji999

Marvelbet

Betvisa

Mcw

Nagad88

Babu88

Jaya9

babu88 babu88 jeetwin abbabet nagad88 marvelbet melbet mostbet six6s crickex mcw casino baji999 betvisa krikya mostplay crazy time jeetbuzz 79king1 good88 11bet xoso66 nohu78 xin88 nohu90 v9bet fastwin betvisa
jeetbuzz
babu88
babu888
jeetwin
nagad88
jaya9
khela88
mostplay
baji999
abbabet
1xbet 12bet marvel bet 91 club betvisa login baji999 sky247 gugobet lotus365 yolo247 bsport loto188 bsport site 8day xoso66 v9bet rummy deity yono rummy new88 typhu88 jeetbuzz dafabet lotus365 bet88 v9bet đăng nhập thienhabet 188bet link dafabet login betvisa king567 yolo247 login 1xbet login 24betting 91club crickex kubet new88 hi88 jun88 w88 shbet mksports 33win f8bet 123b fb88 vn88 mu88 five88 bk8 w388 gnbet mcw casino thienhabet sodo casino cmd368 bsport eubet sbobet mibet cmd368 Faridabad Satta Satta King 786 Dafabet betvisa yono rummy rummy apk

alo789

https://metalwave.com.mx/app/

https://meisetio.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/ai/index.php?tunnel=alo-789

https://purneauniversity.ac.in/assets/js/mk/?tunnel=baji999

fastwin

fastwin

winzo

winzo

futemax

Kèo nhà cái

bongdadzo

Tỷ số bóng đá

KQBD

Kết quả bóng đá

rummy nabob

hi88

8day

97win

n88

red88

king88

j88

i9bet

good88

nohu78

99ok

bet168

satta king

satta matta matka

Canais Play

ALO789

yono rummy
rummy deity
rummy nabob
rummy wealth
daman games
jeetbuzz
yolo247
baji999
rummy gold
188bet
v9bet
789bet
crickex
1xbet
thienhabet
c54
sky88
33win
79king
kubet
shbet
good88
3king
nohu
lucky88
97win
xoso66
xin88
daga88
yolo247
jeetbuzz
betvisa
jeetwin
baji999
nagad88
babu88
mostplay
babu888
jaya9
khela88
jaya9
khela88
jeetbuzz
betvisa
abbabet
babu88
babu888
jeetwin
nagad88
jaya9
joya 9
khela88
mostplay
marvelbet
baji999

Sponsored From Malaysia

말레이시아에서 후원