AsianScientist (Dec. 1, 2015) – Happy people have more grey matter mass in their precuneus, a region in the medial parietal lobe that becomes active when experiencing consciousness, scientists at Kyoto University have found. Their findings resulted from a study, published in Scientific Reports, which combined a happiness survey and MRI scans.
While psychologists have found that emotional factors like intensity of emotion and satisfaction of life together constitute the subjective experience of being happy, the neurological basis has remained unclear.
Understanding the neural mechanism behind the emergence of happiness emerges will be a huge asset for quantifying levels of happiness objectively, according to Associate Professor Wataru Sato, lead author of the study.
Sato and his team scanned the brains of research participants with an MRI. The participants then took a survey that asked how happy they were generally, how intensely they felt emotions, and how satisfied they were with their lives.
“Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is,” Sato said. “I’m very happy that we now know more about what it means to be happy.”
Sato is hopeful about the implications the findings have for happiness training.
“Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus. This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research,” he said.
The article can be found at: Sato et al. (2015) The Structural Neural Substrate of Subjective Happiness.
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Source: Kyoto University.
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