Scientists Find Where Human Happiness Happens Inside The Brain

Scientists Find Where Human Happiness Happens Inside The Brain - A group of Japanese scientists have examined the human brain using MRI with only one goal, find where happiness happens.

Neurologists at the Kyoto University announced Friday that they’ve found where happiness is being processed inside the human brain, what happiness may be made of, and why some people are happier than others.

According to the new Oxford English dictionary, happiness is simply the “state of being happy.” In other words, it’s what we feel when we see or experience positive and pleasant events, things, relationship or company of other human beings and so on. People started using the word after the 14th century (the word happy) because in that century, you could be glad but not happy, says our good ‘ol Oxford happy meaning.

Some people are also happy when they see “bad stuff”, while others experience happiness more intensely than others.

But what exactly is happiness from a neurological perspective, meaning, inside our brain?

Well, Wataru Sato and his team said happiness is made of “happy emotions and satisfaction of life” that travel to and merge in a region called precuneus located in the brain’s parietal lobe. It becomes active when humans are experiencing consciousness, or the state of being aware or awake.

But here’s the catch, they still have no idea how happiness emerges. Understanding such mechanism, or what neurologists call the neural mechanism, will be “a huge asset for quantifying levels of happiness objectively,” says research author Sato.

The Japan team examined the brains of participants using magnetic resonance imaging, or simply called the MRI. This instrument uses a magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to take pictures of internal human organs, including the brain. In addition to MRI scans, research participants also took a survey with questions about their happiness, like how happy they are, how satisfied they are with their lives, and how intensely they feel emotions.

After analyzing all the data, Sato and his colleagues found that participants who scored higher happiness levels in the survey had more grey matter mass in their precuneus. It means people who feel higher happiness levels, feel sadness less intensely, and those that are more capable to finding the meaning in life, have larger precuneus.

Sato says that over many centuries, many scholars including Aristotle have “contemplated what happiness is.” He also adds that “he’s very happy” that we now know more about the place where happiness happens inside our brain, and what it means to be happy.

Previous studies about meaning of human happiness suggested that people who experience higher levels of happiness are those who forgive easily, surround themselves with happy people and family, and those “who don’t care” about their neighbors or surroundings.

The once blurry meaning of human happiness is now a bit clearer - but of course, more follow-up studies are needed to “solidify” the word’s true meaning. Source: StGist

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