Lacking Christmas spirit? Blame your brain

With Christmas around the corner, if you still can't get into the spirit and feel Bah Humbug about it, don't worry as a new study has revealed that it may just be how your brain works.

The team of scientists has claimed to have identified the part of the brain that decides if we are more Santa than Grinch at this time of year.

They estimate that millions of people are prone to displaying Christmas spirit deficiencies, and refer to this as the 'bah humbug' syndrome and said that accurate localisation of the Christmas spirit is a paramount first step in being able to help this group of patients and can advance understanding of the brain's role in festive cultural traditions.

So the team of researchers from Rigshospitalet, a hospital affiliated with Copenhagen University, attempted to locate the 'Christmas spirit' in the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Results showed five areas that included the left primary motor and premotor cortex, right inferior and superior parietal lobule and bilateral primary somatosensory cortex.

"Although merry and intriguing, these findings should be interpreted with caution," they explain. "Something as magical and complex as the Christmas spirit cannot be fully explained by, or limited to, the mapped brain activity alone."

The study is published in The BMJ.