We’ve all been there: we finally ask out the total hottie we’ve been crushing on for months, only for them to reply with “…who are you?” Oof and ow. Hands tremble, eyes water, we turn away in shame, and our heart literally breaks in half. This is very dangerous! The heart actually works best when it’s all in one piece, pumping blood, and not when it’s in many pieces crying.

Scientists have long looked for ways to mend a broken heart. The classic adage “time heals all wounds” has been the primary standard of care, but that has been deemed “very boring” by experts. Other researchers have looked into things like “sad music,” “eating,” and “partying.” In spite of these classical treatments, over the course of someone’s life, there is a nearly 100% chance they will experience hurt feelings! Clearly, a new approach is needed.

Previous methods of dealing with heartbreak have all been focused on the mental state; our psychological health. Now research scientists have been looking into physically reassembling the heart. Initial attempts at welding and gluing failed. Researchers went back to first principles to find the proper adhesive. Then, Dr. Jimmy Scientist – who was having an HVAC system installed in his house – looked up what a duct was. The first Google result says a duct is “a bodily tube or vessel.” The heart is a pump, sure, but it still has blood flow through it, which sorta makes it a duct. Using the axiom of “well technically…” scientists recently announced a new way to fix a broken heart: duct tape!

Using duct tape to fix a broken heart is not an easy process. Taping it all back together requires open heart surgery which has been described as “ouchie” and “yucky.” On top of this, the tape doesn’t stick if the heart is all wet and bloody, so they have to drain all the blood out of you first, which can make you light-headed. Then surgeons have to find most (at least a few) of the little broken pieces and tape it all together. At the end of the procedure, a really good doctor will even remember to put the blood back in the body.

So how does this work? A healthy heart pumps blood using the power of squishy-wishy. This blood reaches your whole body, including the brain. Some scientists suspect the brain might actually be a vampire because it really likes blood. In fact, the brain drinks ~2 ½ cups of blood every minute, which has been described as “radical” and “totally metal.” The brain is happy when it drinks this blood, and that makes you happy. When the heart is all leaky and broken, however, the brain can’t get enough blood. It gets angry and starts fluttering its bat wings or whatever. This can wobble your tear ducts, causing them to leak, and also makes your feelings hurt.

Duct tape keeps the heart watertight (bloodtight?!?) and gives it a chance to squish-wish blood up to your endraculated brain. With luck, we’ll be able to bounce back from heartbreak with speed. So if you experience heartbreak before the next April Fool’s, consider the duct tape method: all it takes is some open-heart surgery, a roll of adhesive tape, and a surgeon with no scruples.

Staff Writer / Editor Benton Lowey-Ball, BS, BFA

References:

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If there’s one thing I learned in elementary school… well, it was probably how to read. But if there’s one thing I learned every year around this time, it’s that Valentine’s Day isn’t just for lovers but for friends and classmates, too. Valentine’s Day is the time of year we celebrate the most special people in our lives – and it’s a good time to investigate the health effects of love and social relationships.

Love is a curious word. I love my wife and child, but also my cats, parents, siblings, friends, cookies, pizza, and ice cream. While some of my loves are potentially dangerous (or so my blood pressure tells me), my love of friends, family, and community might keep me alive – or at least balance the carbs. Studies have shown that maintaining social relationships can lower the rate of all-cause mortality: love literally increases your lifespan. This has been suspected for centuries and can be seen anecdotally in extreme examples with hermits, but it has been causally validated in recent years. Multiple studies in several countries have found that those with healthy social relationships are around half as likely to die over a given time span than isolated people. These relationships included marriage, contact with friends and family, and participation in communities like church, and other formal and informal groups. But how could our social lives affect our health? And what is the scientific definition of love anyway?

Love is… hard to define. One of the best ways to describe love is as a motivation system. It’s not only an emotion because it lasts much longer and shapes how we act over long periods of time. Instead, it’s the part of our personality that recognizes our need for social relationships to survive and reproduce. A skillful lone person can survive in the wilderness or on a deserted island for a while, but they will have trouble if they break an arm or try to have children without anyone else around. We need each other, and one of the parts that ensures we will act prosocially is love. So what’s that look like inside the brain?

Experiments show that a brain on love has a few hallmarks. The brain activates the reward system and parts of the cortex (medial insula, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus). The reward system encourages us to keep loving others and boosts dopamine, which makes us feel good, raises our desire, and acts in an almost addictive way similar to cocaine. The brain also lowers the activation of the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, the sympathetic “fight or flight” response, and chemicals like cortisol. Love also deactivates parts of the brain associated with social judgment, assessing other people’s intentions, and “negative emotions” like sadness. Serotonin is also suppressed, which may lead to obsessive symptoms similar to OCD. Love is both addictive and obsessive!

Two hormones are released by the hypothalamus: oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin is known as the “love hormone” and increases attachment and bonding. It’s released in romantic love and during childbirth. It is thought to help mothers bond with babies. Vasopressin also increases bonding and attachment while affecting blood pressure and the kidneys. This gives a clue as to how love can be healthy.

In most developed nations (including the USA), the biggest causes of death aren’t from infectious diseases but from chronic ones. Diseases like heart disease are exacerbated by stress and stress hormones like cortisol and those of the sympathetic nervous system. Studies have shown that animals with social relationships have fewer ulcers and neurotic conditions and have lower blood pressure. Social support is able to mitigate stress and its negative effects. Love also has positive effects on the big picture of how we run our lives, giving us meaning, coherence, and promoting healthy behaviors like self-improvement and getting enough sleep (after college at least).

So this Valentine’s Day, tell those around you that you love them. Appreciate the relationships and communities you are a part of and activate those obsessive and addictive parts of your brain on something healthy. It’s elementary, really.

Staff Writer / Editor Benton Lowey-Ball, BS, BFA

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References:

Cuzzo, B., Padala, S. A., & Lappin, S. L. (2023). Physiology, vasopressin. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526069/

House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. (1988). Social relationships and health. Science, 241(4865), 540-545. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Debra-Umberson/publication/19756223_Social_Relationships_and_Health/links/00b495220b128b3aec000000/Social-Relationships-and-Health.pdf

Seshadri, K. G. (2016). The neuroendocrinology of love. Indian journal of endocrinology and metabolism, 20(4), 558. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911849/

Zeki, S. (2007). The neurobiology of love. FEBS letters, 581(14), 2575-2579. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014579307004875

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The holidays are a time for giving. We give gifts, hugs, support, unsolicited advice, and time. Of those, time can make the most significant difference to society at large if we provide it in the form of volunteering. Over 1 in 4 Americans volunteer their time. To count as volunteering, one has to freely choose to do the activity (no getting volun-told) and it should be altruistic. There are different categories of volunteering broken down into self-oriented and other-oriented. Self-oriented volunteering involves some kind of personal benefit, like potential career advancement. Other-oriented volunteering is instead focused on helping others in areas like health, education, religious groups, and youth development. Regardless of the category, any volunteering is good volunteering. Anyone who volunteers knows that besides helping others, it also gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside, but did you know that fuzzy feeling might help keep you alive?

Before we get into studies and possible health benefits, we must cover caveats. Studying the effects of volunteering on the body and brain is hard. You literally can’t force people to volunteer, so most of our information comes from observational studies. This is where researchers will follow people over time and compare those who volunteer to those who don’t. This can give us some great data, but it’s hard to know if volunteering is the cause or the effect. A senior citizen with a painful condition who works 60 hours a week will probably volunteer less than a healthy retiree (clinical research tries to mitigate these needs by providing compensation for time and travel to help make volunteering easier). Good studies therefore compare people with similar health, economic, and other factors in an attempt to isolate any effects volunteering has.

With that in mind, volunteering seems to be associated with great outcomes. It appears to be associated with improvements in depression and life satisfaction. In a 14-year study of those above 60, a 2016 study found a reduced risk of cognitive decline due to volunteering. Most amazingly, a 2013 meta-analysis, which looked at the results of 40 other studies, found a 22% reduction in death! Even when taken with a McDonald’s french fry of salt, these results are very promising. But what’s going on to make this happen? There are no definite answers, but three suspected ones:

• Physical activity: volunteering usually requires people to get up and move. This is particularly helpful for those whose social networks are shrinking
• Social interaction: volunteering uses the social parts of your brain. Increasing these has been shown to increase survivability by up to 50%
• Prosocial behavior: volunteering increases our social networks, which act as reinforcement systems for health

How can we gain these benefits? By volunteering, of course! Food banks, schools, refugee services, and youth development programs can always use volunteers. The internet is a great place to look for opportunities to grow your social networks and help others. Clinical research is another great way to volunteer. One of the biggest draws for clinical research volunteers is knowing that the medicines they help research can help future generations. Today’s trials can help pave the way for medications and procedures that may persist into the future. This holiday season, if you can, volunteer and give the gift that keeps on giving.

Staff Writer / Editor Benton Lowey-Ball, BS, BFA

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References:

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS medicine, 7(7), e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Infurna, F. J., Okun, M. A., & Grimm, K. J. (2016). Volunteering is associated with lower risk of cognitive impairment. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 64(11), 2263-2269. https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.14398

Jenkinson, C. E., Dickens, A. P., Jones, K., Thompson-Coon, J., Taylor, R. S., Rogers, M., … & Richards, S. H. (2013). Is volunteering a public health intervention? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the health and survival of volunteers. BMC public health, 13(1), 1-10. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-773?TB_iframe=true

Kwon, S. J., van Hoorn, J., Do, K. T., Burroughs, M., & Telzer, E. H. (2023). Neural representation of donating time and money. Journal of Neuroscience, 43(36), 6297-6305. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0480-23.2023

Webster, N. J., Ajrouch, K. J., & Antonucci, T. C. (2021). Volunteering and health: The role of social network change. Social Science & Medicine, 285, 114274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114274

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The long-dead philosopher Cicero once said, “There is no quality I would rather have, and be thought to have, than gratitude. For it is not only the greatest virtue, but is the mother of all the rest.” Gratitude is when we are thankful and appreciate kindness, people, and the world around us. It goes beyond a quick emotion. When we get a thoughtful or meaningful gift, it makes us happy, but that feeling may only stay with us short term. The long-term nature of gratitude is what makes it powerful. Simple appreciation can change into a general mood, and with enough gratitude, our personality can change (hopefully for the better). If we live a life choosing gratitude, we feel happy when we get gifts, but also at smaller things. The long-term personality trait associated with gratitude can increase positive emotions, leave us satisfied, and may help decrease envy, anxiety, and depression.

Persistent personality traits are a neat thing. They affect our mood and emotional response to everyday things. Gratitude as a personality trait increases the intensity (amplitude) and duration of positive thankful emotions and makes it easier to feel thankful. It also increases the number of other people you feel thankful for (like being appreciative that your sister’s cousin’s best friend’s thrash metal band got a record deal). This happens because personality traits indicate that the brain has specific structures and wiring paths built over time. With gratitude, we can see that these changes are in a few key areas of the brain: those responsible for social bonding, perspective-taking, moral judgment and decision-making, and the reward system. They aren’t just emotional areas; they include intentional and calculated parts of the brain that help change our overall outlook. Overall, brain areas increased by gratitude are prosocial; they promote good social behaviors like friendship.

Being thankful is great for making friends and feeling good, but it may also have health benefits! Psychological effects include increased positive emotions, satisfaction, and spirituality as well as decreased indicators of depression, anxiety, and envy. Gratitude-filled people also tend to be more empathetic, forgiving, helpful, and supportive. This makes sense; recognizing good things focuses our attention on more good things. Thankfully, gratitude may also affect our physical health! Measuring gratitude is difficult, so take the following with a grain of salt. Beneficial biomarkers of health measured by people with high gratitude include improved inflammation, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and A1C (blood sugar). These are associated with some pretty serious conditions like asthma, cardiovascular disease, and the effects of diabetes. It is unclear how feeling thankful can cause all of these changes, but it may be due to eating and sleeping habits. Gratitude has been linked with lowering dysfunctional eating habits and with improving sleep quality. A good diet is always important, but a good night’s sleep may be even more important for gratitude. So this November, let’s all be thankful for the ability to feel thankful!

Staff Writer / Editor Benton Lowey-Ball, BS, BFA

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References:

Allen, S. (2018). The science of gratitude (pp. 1217948920-1544632649). Conshohocken, PA: John Templeton Foundation. https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/GGSC-JTF_White_Paper-Gratitude-FINAL.pdf

Boggiss, A. L., Consedine, N. S., Brenton-Peters, J. M., Hofman, P. L., & Serlachius, A. S. (2020). A systematic review of gratitude interventions: Effects on physical health and health behaviors. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 135, 110165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2020.110165

McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J. A. (2002). The grateful disposition: a conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of personality and social psychology, 82(1), 112. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.112

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Boo! This Halloween many of us will dress as spooky things, visit houses with creepy decorations, go into haunted houses, watch scary movies, and enjoy other horror-related entertainment. But being scared kinda sucks. Why do many of us actively subject ourselves to being scared on purpose?

One of the big draws of scary things is dichotomy: the contrast between two ideas that can’t both be true. When we watch a scary movie, we are safe in a theater, but feel the danger and emotion as if we were ourselves being chased by a shark with a knife (or whatever). In a haunted house we may get an even more visceral experience, as our neighbor jumps out at us with a rubber knife in his realistic shark costume. Knowing we are safe makes our brains bounce back and forth between danger and safety. Another big pull of Halloween scares is that they rely on expectations. Most of us would be pretty upset to come home and find a giant spider and some skeletons on our bed. But when given the proper context and expectation, we can be excited and find scary decorations fun and exciting.

Fear is the major emotion at play here, but what is fear? Our emotions can be roughly divided along two lines: valence and amplitude. Valence describes the positive or negative quality of an emotion and amplitude is how strong the emotion is felt. In this organization scheme, fear has a negative valence and a high amplitude, it makes us feel bad and we feel it strongly. On top of this, amplitude seems a little more persistent than valence, so there is a delay period where we still feel excited but can change from a negative to positive valence. So fear with the right context (such as a haunted house or scary movie) makes us switch between the negative valence of fear and the logical knowledge that we are safe.

We can look inside the brain to get a better understanding of what’s happening. There are two competing pathways that activate with fear, depending on the distance to danger. The midbrain pathway activates for close, immediate threats. It is the “fight or flight” response to fear. The frontal cortex is for threats that are further away and is in charge of planning and strategizing. With spooky halloween fears, these two systems are in direct opposition. Trying to overcome the midbrain pathway is hard, but rewarding. We are also rewarded when successfully surviving a scary situation. When we conquer our fear we have the high amplitude of fear combined with the positive valence of relief. So this Halloween, indulge in a little emotional hijacking and enjoy your fear a little bit!

Staff Writer / Editor Benton Lowey-Ball, BS, BFA

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References:

Anders, S., Lotze, M., Erb, M., Grodd, W., & Birbaumer, N. (2004). Brain activity underlying emotional valence and arousal: A response‐related fMRI study. Human brain mapping, 23(4), 200-209.

Dewey, J. (1894). “The theory of emotion: I: Emotional attitudes”. The Psychological Review. 1(6), 553–569. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0069054

Nummenmaa, L. (2021). Psychology and neurobiology of horror movies. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/b8tgs