“- How are you?
- These rainy autumn days make me gloomy lately.”
If you ever heard or said this words, you probably wondered if the weather has any affect on your mood. But is it just the weather, or are autumns the reason behind our gloominess?
It is all in your head
Our personality attributes - the way our brain processes different things – are mostly genetically inherited but can also be influenced by some other factors. This individuality can also be seen in the “resting” state of our brain, when we do not receive any special stimuli, and is called resting brain asymmetry. It can be influenced by gender, left or right handedness, but can also be used to diagnose some mental disorders. And why is it important? Researches found that resting frontal asymmetric activity predicts emotional responses. People with greater right than left frontal activity have larger negative emotional responses compared to positive stimuli.
Let’s add hormones into our brain model!
Cortisol is commonly known as the “stress hormone” as it’s level shows an increase with long term stress. But it is so much more than that! Not a commonly known fact about cortisol that it also has a diurinal (24 hours long) cycle. Cortisol levels rise in the morning, after waking up, and then slowly gradually decreases throughout day. In the afternoon cortisol levels starts increasing, and fall to their slowest point in the middle of the night. Cortisol levels also show a change depending on the current season: usually being higher during winter and autumn.
But how is it all related?
Depressed people show a higher right frontal brain activity, meaning they have larger negative emotional responses. This is probably no surprise to anyone. But it was also found that it was the result of the higher cortisol levels in depressed individuals, compared to healthy ones.
So what does it say for specific times of the day, or different seasons? People reacting more negatively in the mornings or in autumn becomes pretty consequently in the light of the previous information. So yes, seasons do actually effect our overall mood! Luckily, by observing the changes and not the relative asymmetry in the brain, we still can acquire a precise motivational intent without having to take these multiple factors into count.
written by Nóri Paller
