Week 13: The Neuroscience of Gratitude 

• Rooted in the Latin "gratia" (grace, gratefulness).
  
  

• Involves recognizing and appreciating positive aspects of life, from others, nature, or experiences.
  
  

• Practiced through words, notes, or personal reflection.
  
  

• Shifts focus from what we lack to what we have.

Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough define gratitude as a two-step process: first, recognizing that one has received a positive outcome, and second, acknowledging that the source of this positivity lies outside oneself. This means gratitude isn't just about feeling good, it's about understanding that something or someone contributed to your well-being.

Psychologists also break gratitude down into three forms:

• As an affective trait, it's part of your personality — a natural tendency to notice and appreciate the good in life.
  
  

• As a mood, gratitude can rise and fall throughout the day, influenced by your experiences.
  
  

• As an emotion, it's a temporary feeling you get in response to something specific — like someone doing you a favor or giving you a thoughtful gift.
  
  

This layered understanding of gratitude helps explain why it can be practiced and developed over time, even if it doesn’t come naturally at first.

Recognition: Notice acts of kindness and positive events.

Understanding the Source: See if good things come from outside yourself (others, nature, etc.).

Emotional Response: Feelings of joy or thankfulness.

Reflection and Attribution: Think about why you received kindness or positivity.

Expression of Gratitude: Express thanks verbally, in writing, or through actions.

Animals engage in behaviors known as reciprocal altruism. Acts of helping another member of their species even when it comes at a personal cost. These behaviors are believed to occur because the animal, at an instinctual level, recognizes that the favor might be returned in the future. Many researchers see this pattern as an evolutionary foundation for gratitude, suggesting that gratitude may have developed as a mechanism to reinforce these social bonds and promote cooperation among individuals.

For example:

• Cleaner fish, like the cleaner wrasse, pick parasites off larger fish. These larger fish return repeatedly to the same cleaners, forming a mutualistic bond.

• Elephants have been seen helping injured or stuck herd members and appear to remember specific individuals who helped them in the past.

These social behaviors suggest that the roots of gratitude may lie deep in our evolutionary past, helping animals & humans included, turn strangers into allies and build cooperative societies.

Reward System Activation: Gratitude lights up brain regions like the VTA and nucleus accumbens (pleasure/reward).

Neural Sensitivity: Regular gratitude increases sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Emotional Regulation: Boosts activity in the ACC and mPFC, helping manage emotions and empathy.

Reduced Stress: Increases oxytocin, enhancing trust and lowering anxiety.

Resilience: Reframes negativity, strengthens mental health.

Research by psychologists Joshua Brown and Joel Wong at Indiana University has shown that gratitude isn't just a feel-good emotion—it leads to real, lasting changes in both mental health and brain function. Their work identified four key discoveries:

1. Gratitude frees us from toxic emotions:
   Writing about what we’re thankful for helps reduce negative feelings like anger, envy, or regret—even if the gratitude is never shared with others.
   
   

2. Gratitude helps even if it's kept private:
   Simply writing gratitude letters improved mental health outcomes for participants, regardless of whether the letters were ever sent.
   
   

3. Gratitude’s effects take time:
   The mental health benefits of gratitude didn’t appear right away, but built up over weeks—showing the importance of consistency and patience.
   
   

4. Gratitude creates lasting brain changes:
   Brain scans showed that practicing gratitude increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a region linked to decision-making and emotional regulation, even months after the practice ended.
   
   

This research helps confirm that gratitude is more than a momentary feeling—it’s a powerful tool for long-term emotional resilience and brain he

Recap: Gratitude improves mental, physical, and social well-being.

Activities help personalize gratitude practices.

Starting a journal sets you on the path to embracing gratitude.

Use these sentence starters to help you:

1. I’ll never forget the time when...

2. It was a [happy/sad/challenging] time in my life because...

3. One person who stood out to me was...

4. They helped me by...

5. I felt so grateful because...

6. To this day, I still remember how that made me feel...

Brown, J. W., & Wong, J. (2017). How gratitude changes you and your brain. Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain

Carter, G. G., & Wilkinson, G. S. (2013). Food sharing in vampire bats: Reciprocal help predicts donations more than relatedness or harassment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280(1753), 20122573. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2573

Chowdhury, M. R. (2020, January 9). Anxiety and grief. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude

de Waal, F. (2009). The age of empathy: Nature’s lessons for a kinder society. Crown Publishing.

Emmons, R. A. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377

Emmons, R. A. (2013). Gratitude as a psychotherapeutic intervention. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(8), 846–855. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23775470/

Fox, G. R., Kaplan, J., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (2015). Neural correlates of gratitude. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1491. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01491

Kini, P., Wong, J., McInnis, S., Gabana, N., & Brown, J. W. (2016). The effects of gratitude expression on neural activity. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1223. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26746580/

Miller, J. (2016, July 8). 8 ways to have more gratitude every day. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2016/07/08/8-ways-to-have-more-gratitude-every-day

Mills, P. J., Redwine, L., Wilson, K., Pung, M. A., Chinh, K., Greenberg, B. H., Lunde, O., Maisel, A., Raisinghani, A., Wood, A., & Chopra, D. (2015). The role of gratitude in spiritual well-being in asymptomatic heart failure patients. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2(1), 5–17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4507265/

Seed, A., & Byrne, R. W. (2010). Animal tool-use. Current Biology, 20(23), R1032–R1039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.09.042

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410–421. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16045394/

Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.1086/406755

Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 890–905. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735810000450

Zak, P. J., Stanton, A. A., & Ahmadi, S. (2004). Oxytocin increases generosity in humans. PLoS Biology, 2(11), e447. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15677415/