Adult colouring in books can be fun and relaxing but what actually happens within the brain when engaging in the fun little hobby and what are the effects and benefits?
In: Biology
A good portion of your brain is the “dumb monkey” part. This portion of your brain does a lot of things really well, for example it is freakishly good at picking out the shape of a human against a backdrop.
Another thing it does well is convince you to enjoy doing what should be seen as a boring and repetitive task. Why? Imagine back when your ancestors were fishing termites out of hills with twigs to eat or combing through bushes for berries. That’s boring as hell, you’re there for hours doing the same thing over and over.
So your brain tricks you into enjoying it, each time you complete a little goal (fish out a termite, find a berry, complete a bit of a picture) it gives you a small serotonin boost as a reward, a chemical that makes you feel happy. So you repeat the process to get the same boost over and over.
This also ties into things like gambling and gaming addition – your brain finds something that it knows will get the serotonin boost and keeps seeking out that activity.
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