Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!  Some tunes to celebrate, though admittedly we’re have already OD’d since they started playing at Halloween this year.

Couldn’t resist adding this George Harrison song:

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An interesting tidbit of news which seems to provide some insight into the current occupant of the WH’s penchant for retribution. 

Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist James Kimmel says the need for revenge activates regions of the brain associated with addiction, releasing the neurotransmitter dopamine.

From the Harvard Gazette:

When people are harboring a grievance, no matter its validity, Kimmel said, “It’s a very real pain. And your brain really, really doesn’t want pain — and so it instantly scrambles to rebalance that pain with pleasure.”

Decades of functional MRI data show the result: As subjects fantasize about settling scores, the brain’s reward and pleasure centers flood with dopamine — just as they would from gambling or tobacco.

And, just as with gambling or tobacco, the high doesn’t last. “It spurs us to go further, fantasize even more heavily, or go and take a physical act of revenge — to get that hit again and again,” Kimmel said.

Researchers have also determined that if an individual practices forgiveness is a “wonder drug.”

If revenge is a cheap thrill, Kimmel argued, “Forgiveness is something of a wonder drug.” The same brain scans show that after a harm, forgiveness “actually deactivates the anterior insula, the pain network inside your head. So instead of covering it up with a dopamine rush, you’re actually getting pain stoppage.”

Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.