Tis Better to Give Than to Receive

Researchers have found that the mesolim­bic path­way is acti­vat­ed by char­i­ta­ble giv­ing. This area is one of the major path­ways where you find the neu­ro­trans­mit­ter dopamine, which is asso­ci­at­ed with the brain’s plea­sure sys­tem. Fur­ther­more, donat­ing also appears to increase the release of oxy­tocin, a hor­mone that acts as a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter and is involved in social bond­ing and build­ing trust between people.
So this hol­i­day, find a way to give back. Not only will it make you feel bet­ter, but social activ­i­ties are good stress reduc­ers too. If you and your fam­i­ly are at each oth­ers’ throats with too much togeth­er­ness, plan an activ­i­ty together.
Go feed the hun­gry at a local com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, Walk the dogs at a local shel­ter, Vis­it the sick at a hos­pi­tal, Clean a park or beach togeth­er. Hav­ing an activ­i­ty togeth­er will take the focus off of each oth­er and give you a rea­son to work togeth­er, bond, and enjoy your dopamine/oxytocin rush. It’s good for your brain.

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Everyone a Changemaker”, Ashoka and Google

What an event yes­ter­day night. My wife and I were for­tu­nate to vis­it the Google Cam­pus and attend the Sixth Annu­al North Amer­i­can Fel­low­ship Induc­tion Pro­gram of Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, a social ven­ture fund where we have been involved for a num­ber of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and…

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Microfinance, and a very sharp brain

We would like to join oth­er blog­gers in con­grat­u­lat­ing Muham­mad Yunus for hav­ing been award­ed the Nobel Peace Price. The gen­e­sis of micro­fi­nance, in Pro­fes­sor Yunus’ own words. Not often can we find per­son­i­fied exam­ples of what we write about. For 3 out of the last 4 entries in this blog, I can not think…

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The joy of giving, and the Cognitive and Emotional Health Project: The Healthy Brain

Great arti­cle in this week’s The Econ­o­mist on The joy of giv­ing: Donat­ing to char­i­ty rewards the brain. Some quotes: “Researchers at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke in Bethes­da, Mary­land, want­ed to find the neur­al basis for unselfish acts. They decid­ed to peek into the brains of 19 vol­un­teers who were choosing…

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On being positive

One day after 9/11, I would like to depart a bit from the pri­ma­ry focus of this blog and add some per­son­al reflec­tions onBe­ing Pos­i­tive and on Appre­ci­a­tion, which is what we prob­a­bly need to sur­vive in these times. I remem­ber a few years ago when, over brunch, my good friend Rohit pro­posed that Happiness =…

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