What makes a few people happier than others

It is the medial parietal lobe, also called the precuneus that gets active when you are conscious and we go through happiness as well as life satisfaction, according to scienceworldreport.

Now, researcher and psychologist Wataru Sato, and colleagues at Kyoto University, have homed in on the region of the brain that plays a significant role in how a person subjectively rates their overall happiness.

Of course, this is still a new concept, so Sato hopes that it will, in fact, lead to yet more study to further investigate this part of the brain as well as how we can potentially use this information to develop new programs, practices, or behaviors in order to help people experience more happiness.

The definition of happiness has been debated for centuries.

“Our findings suggest that the precuneus mediates subjective happiness by integrating the emotional and cognitive components of happiness”, they write.

“To date, no structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) investigation of the construct has been conducted”, they note.

After the scans, subjects were asked to complete three short questionnaires that asked them how satisfied they are with their lives, how happy they are and how intensely they feel positive and negative emotions.

For example, Sato said, “several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus”.

What is more, the researchers found that one’s happiness may be driven by a combination of greater life satisfaction and intensity of positive emotion – supporting the theory of subjective well-being. By doing the MRI scans first, there’s a chance they may have influenced the level of happiness the subjects reported.

Those who scored higher on the happiness surveys had more grey matter mass in the precuneus.

The findings aren’t necessarily surprising, as the authors noted that prior research has hinted at a connection between happy emotional states and the medial parietal cortex.

“Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is”, study lead author Wataru Sato said in a university news release.