Essentials: The Science of Gratitude & How to Build a Gratitude Practice

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we are talking all about the science of gratitude. There's now a wealth of data showing that having an effective gratitude practice can impact a huge number of health variables, both mental health and physical health in positive ways. However, in researching this episode, I was completely surprised as to what constitutes an effective gratitude practice. I think like many of you would have thought that an effective gratitude practice simply involves writing down a few things or many things that we're grateful for or thinking about those, or really making an effort to somaticize or feel some of the elements of gratitude while writing out that list or thinking about that list. It turns out that an effective gratitude practice doesn't resemble that at all. The neuroimaging data, the physiological data, looking at things like inflammatory markers, other studies purely looking at the psychology and the long and short-term effects of an effective gratitude practice point to a completely different approach to using gratitude to positively impact health metrics. There are studies showing that performing a gratitude practice twice or three times or even just once a week can lead to a pervasive, a long lasting impact on subjective wellbeing. People report feeling happier, more meaning, joy, even awe for their life experience, simply in response to adding a gratitude practice. But there are additional benefits of a gratitude practice. There are studies showing that a regular gratitude practice can provide resilience to trauma in two ways. It can provide a reframing and resilience to prior traumatic experiences. So buffering people against the negative physiological effects and psychological effects of earlier trauma, but also inoculating them in many ways to any traumas that might arrive later in life. The other thing that a gratitude practice does is it's been shown to benefit social relationships, but not just for the relationship in which you express gratitude, right? So on the face of it, you might think, okay, if I express gratitude for somebody over and over, over and over, over and over, then I'm going to feel better about that person. And indeed that is one effect of a gratitude practice that's called a pro-social or inter-social gratitude practice. But there are now several studies, recent studies in good journals, pointing to the fact that a regular gratitude practice can also enhance one's social relationships across the board, in the workplace, at school, with family, in romantic relationships, and even one's relationship to themselves, which is really what the subjective feelings of well-being are. And for those of you that are coming to this conversation thinking, gratitude practice, oh, that's kind of wishy-washy or woo, it's going to involve putting your hand on your heart and feeling into all the amazing things that you happen to have, even when things are really terrible, that's not where we're going at all. So if you are of the mindset that a gratitude practice is kind of weak sauce, buckle up because the data actually point to the fact that a gratitude practice is a very, very potent way in which you can steer your mental and physical health in positive directions and that those effects are very long lasting. Before we dive into the tools and mechanisms and scientific studies around gratitude, I'd like to just set the framework for the discussion. Gratitude is what we call a pro-social behavior or a pro-social mindset. Pro-social behaviors are basically any behavior or mode of thinking that allow us to be more effective in interactions with other people, including ourselves. Now pro-social is not just a name that we give these different tools and practices and mindsets. They're actually neural circuits in the brain that are specifically wired for pro-social thoughts and behaviors. So without getting into too much detail just yet, we will later, we have circuits in the brain that are what we call a repetitive. They are designed to bring us closer to things and to bring us into closer relation to the details of that sensory experience. Now that could be a delicious food that you're eating. It could be interacting with a loved one. It could be interacting with a friend or anyone that you happen to like. It could even be in relation to yourself. And the neural circuits in the brain that are associated with aversive or defensive behaviors are actually antagonized, meaning they are reduced when the pro-social circuits are more active. So the framework here that I'd like to set is that we have this kind of see-saw of neural circuits in the brain, one set that are pro-social and are designed to bring us closer to others, including ourselves, closer to certain sensory experiences, right? Because a lot of pro-social behaviors can also be geared towards things like pets or food or anything that we find we want to be closer to and want more of. Whereas the defensive circuits involve areas of the brain, yes, such as areas that are involved in fear, but also areas of the brain and body that are literally associated with freezing or with backing up. So the way to think about gratitude is that falls under this category of pro-social behaviors, which are designed to bring us closer to different types of things and to enhance the level of detail that we extract from those experiences. The key thing for today's discussion is that gratitude turns out to be one of the most potent wedges by which we can insert our thinking. And as you also see, the physiology of our body between these two circuits and give a little more levity, if you will, to the side of the seesaw that's associated with positive pro-social feelings. And if you keep imagining this seesaw imagery, what's really beautiful about gratitude practices is that if they're performed repeatedly, and not even that often, but repeatedly, then one can actually shift their neural circuits such that the seesaw that I'm calling pro-social versus defensive behaviors can actually start to tilt. What this means is that we now know with certainty that a regular gratitude practice can shift the pro-social circuit so that they dominate our physiology and our mindset in ways that can enhance many, many aspects of our physical and mental health by default. So we don't always have to constantly be in practice trying to be happy. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, 8 Sleep. 8 Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about 1 to 3 degrees. 8 Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. 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It's an extremely powerful tool that anyone can benefit from the first time and every time. If you'd like to try 8Sleep, go to 8sleep.com/huberman to get up to $350 off the new Pod 5 8Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8sleep.com/huberman to save up to $350. Now I'd like to talk about some of the neurochemistry and neural circuits associated with gratitude and prosocial behaviors. Numerous times on this podcast, I've talked about so-called neuromodulators. Those of you that might have forgotten or have never heard of neuromodulators before, neuromodulators are chemicals that are released in the brain and body that change the activity of other neural circuits. They make certain brain areas more likely to be active and other brain areas less likely to be active. These neuromodulators have names like dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, epinephrine, and so on. The main neuromodulators associated with gratitude and prosocial behaviors tends to be serotonin. Serotonin is released from a very small collection of neurons in the brainstem called the RAFE, they are a P-H-E, the RAFE nucleus, and a few other places in the brain. And the RAFE neurons send these little wires that we call axons out to numerous places in the brain. And they tend to increase the activity of particular neural circuits that lend themselves to more approach to particular types of experiences. That makes total sense if you think about it. Have a chemical that under certain circumstances is released in the brain, that triggers the activity of neural circuits that makes the organism, you, more likely to stay in an interaction with something or even lean in and seek a more detailed interaction with that person, place or thing. And two main brain areas are activated by these serotonergic systems. And when people experience something that makes them feel gratitude and the amount of activation scales with how intensely the person experienced the feeling of gratitude. And those two areas have particular names. You don't need to know the names, but for those of you that want to know, they are the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex. And of course, these brain areas are connected to a number of other networks in the brain. In fact, that's how they get you or others to lean into certain experiences because when these areas are active, certain thought processes get invoked. Those thought processes probably resemble something like, hmm, I'd like to experience more of this or, hmm, this feels really good. And then they literally feed onto your muscles via the neurons, making you happy to stay stationary if you're experiencing something you like or to move closer to something that you find attractive to you, literally. Many of you have probably heard of the medial prefrontal cortex because this is the area of the brain that is involved in planning and in deep thinking and evaluation of different types of experiences, past, present, or future. And the reason it can be involved in so many different things and the reason it's especially important for gratitude is that medial prefrontal cortex sets context, okay? It sets context and it literally defines the meaning of your experience. How is it that medial prefrontal cortex sets the context of everything in your life? Well, it does it the following way. You have a number of circuits deeper in your brain that simply create some sensations or they allow you, I should say, to perceive certain sensations. Let's use the example of cold exposure, something that we'd sometimes talk about in this podcast for other reasons. If you were to deliberately place yourself into an ice bath, it would be uncomfortable, even if you're adapted to cold and so forth.