Wood, Metal, and Happiness - How the Brain Works on Contrasts

Try this experiment.  If you have a stainless steel sink, put one hand on it and the other hand on the wall.  Which material feels colder? 

Thermal equilibrium demands that both materials are the same temperature as the air in your house.  But, your brain perceives them as different temperatures. The reason the metal sink feels colder than the wall is that metal is a good thermal conductor and, as a result, pulls heat away from your hand faster than the wall.  We have not evolved a sensory indicator for thermal conductivity so instead the brain creates a signal indicating that the metal is colder.  This helps avoid damaging interactions with objects that might quickly become very hot or very cold.

The key insight from this demonstration is that the brain works on contrasts. Here's why I'm sharing this with you: The reason we cannot be ecstatically happy all the time is precisely because the brain works on contrasts.

One-second frequency signals from the brain's social-emotional valuation network, which my group named Immersion, show this contrast. A peak Immersion  experience, which is highly   valuable, requires  a substantial metabolic investment by the brain  to obtain its value. The  brain metaphorically says "This is awesome, I'm all in!" After such an experience, Immersion data will show a trough because the peak temporarily exhausted the neurons and they need a short recovery period. The term of art for this in neuroscience is that neurons have a "refractory period" after high activation.

Nevertheless, neurons can be pushed beyond their typical physiologic limits. One way to do this is to take drugs. Since this blog is about happiness, let's focus on drugs that give people a rush of good feeling.  We have data from an ongoing experiment-- approximately five million Americans regularly abuse cocaine and 1.6 million abuse methamphetamine.   These stimulants push neurons to activate beyond healthy levels by flooding them with very high amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine.  Chronic use of these stimulants causes "excitotoxicity" in which the neurons in the Immersion network are permanently damaged.  The original ecstatic high from a small dose of coke or meth now requires increasingly higher doses, causing further brain damage.

Longtime stimulant users who are off their drugs often are emotionally flat. They are unable to obtain pleasure by kissing a loved-one or travelling in Italy; they have lost contrast by overstimulating the Immersion network so that nothing makes them happy.

There is a second way to push neurons beyond their typical exhaustion points. Repeated exposure to something, whether good or bad, causes the brain to strengthen connections between neurons and recruit more neurons to process information about the experience.  This is called neuroplasticity and is the reason that professional tennis players can hit tennis balls precisely for hours.

Their brains have developed strong connections in a network that links vision and body movement.  Brain imaging studies show that tennis pros actually recruit more brain activity during their sport than weekend tennis players.  The same is true for people with expertise in just about any field, even ones that do not require athleticism.  Albert Einstein had an enlarged parietal cortex and this area helped him consolidate information so he could quantify how physical constructs like energy and matter interacted.  Neuroplasticity is how the brain adapts the organism to perform more effectively. 

Contrast is why human beings cannot be happy every second of every day. Our brain needs contrast to know what state we are in. We built the SIX app so that users can clearly see what makes them the happiest so they can do more of these activities.  This induces neuroplasticity making it easier to spend more time being happy. 

And, it gets better. Much of our happiness comes from our interactions with other people.  When someone is upbeat and happy, they attract happy people to them which makes them happier.  Peak Immersion is contagious. The same is true for unhappy people, they make those around them unhappy.  Who you are around affects brain function and this directly influences happiness.

People who use the SIX app to increase their joy will still have some refractory periods of "the blahs".  But, by using SIX to measure what is radically fulfilling for you personally, you can have less blah and more awe. SIX is free so there is no reason not to use it to induce neuroplasticity so you can live happier, healthier, and longer.