Happiness levels linked to specific area of the brain, research finds

The secret to happiness is all in your head

On International Happiness Day it seems fitting to ponder, what actually makes us happy?

Is it waking up slowly on a Saturday morning to smells of coffee and croissants? Is it binge-watching Netflix with your partner on a Sunday evening? Or is it simply sitting down to a delicious homemade meal?

Of course, the answer is often subjective i.e. one person’s avocado toast is another person’s green gloop on bread.

However, according to a Japanese study, published in Scientific Journals, happiness runs far deeper than commonplace culinary joys - in fact, it boils down to neuroscience and the size of a particular region in the brain.

A team of university professors in Japan examined the links between brain structure and happiness and found that happier people had a larger volume of grey matter in the precuneus, an area in the brain sandwiched between the two cerebral hemispheres that studies have linked to memory retrieval.

The researchers analysed structural MRI scans and compared these results with participants’ responses to the Japanese version of the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), which measures happiness levels via a four-item questionnaire.

The SHS asks respondents questions intended to rate their personal levels of happiness on a seven-point scale and has been used globally in psychiatry since its advent in 1999.

They found that those who scored highly on the scale typically also benefited from this unique neurological structuring.

“Our results suggest that the precuneus may play an important role in integrating different types of information and converting it into subjective happiness,” the study’s authors explained.

However, they added that their findings don’t necessarily suggest that happiness is dependent on neurological structuring, explaining that there are some lifestyle changes people can make to actually increase the volume of grey matter mass in the precuneus and subsequently boost happiness levels.

“Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus,” said lead author Dr Wataru Sato.

“This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research.”

The benefits of meditation for mental wellbeing are well-documented, with one study claiming that just seven weeks of regular meditation boosted people’s feelings of life purpose, enriched their social lives and even decreased symptoms of illness.