It is well known that there is no universal definition of happiness, which is common for representatives of all countries and cultures, and even the words "happiness" in different languages have different meanings (read our previous article about what anthropologists think about it). However, happiness is even more subjective. From the cognitive sciences' point of view, it is impossible to develop a reliable methodology that would allow us to study what happiness is because for each person it depends on different factors. Measuring only individual aspects of our behavior and emotional state is possible, but they may be able to give a clue as to what processes take place in the brain of a happy person. They will be discussed in this article.
From the point of view of cognitive science, happiness is very difficult to measure, because for every person it is expressed in its own way: for someone, happiness is wealth, for someone - love, and someone will say that happiness is in the presence of purpose in life. Accordingly, our good mood is controlled by individual stimuli that can cause the different intensity of positive emotions in different people (from light joy to euphoria). Therefore, it is almost impossible to systematically study the brain of a happy person to answer the question of what happiness is.
However, the subjective experience of happiness can be divided into two relatively objective components: emotional (intensity of bad and good emotions) and cognitive (the integrity of our consciousness). Thus, the "recipe" for a happy life includes two components: positive emotions (and, as a particularity, the absence of negative emotions) and a sense of meaning about what is happening in the world around us and to ourselves. Below we will talk mainly about the first of them.
Lever of pleasure
Emotion is a mental state (positive or negative), the appearance of which is largely the responsibility of a complex set of brain structures - the limbic system (it is also responsible for the regulation of more basic human functions, such as a sense of smell and circadian rhythms). Simply put, emotion is a person's reaction to a certain external (from the surrounding world) or internal (e.g., mental) stimulus and to the fact that this stimulus can be followed.
Negative emotions, such as fear or disgust, can be traced in the human brain quite easily: the almond-shaped body, or amygdala, is responsible for them. And if fear and aversion are the basic emotions developed in the process of evolution, with positive emotions it is much more difficult. Psychology has long believed that positive emotions are largely associated with pleasure. Therefore, to trace the processes occurring in the brain of a person who is happy or happy, they study the emotional response of a person satisfied.
Research of pleasure and neural correlates connected with its reception originate in experiments of behaviorists of the beginning of XX century. The object of studying behaviorism as a direction of psychology is behavior, in particular, the behavior of an individual as a reaction to a certain stimulus (external or internal). The famous experiment conducted by American psychologists-behaviorists James Olds and Peter Milner in 1954 led to the opening of an important part of the brain, which they called the "pleasure center.
The experiment involved rats sitting in a special box with electrodes implanted in the limbic system. The scientists wanted to find out what kind of reaction the individual would get from the stimulation of the different parts of the area. Low current discharges were triggered by the electrodes each time the rat entered a certain corner of the cell. Scientists have found that after receiving the stimulation, the rat began to return to the corner over and over again. Scientists later checked whether the effect would remain if the animal was responsible for receiving the reward itself, and gave him the opportunity to receive stimulation by pushing the lever. The rat, ignoring the actions necessary for survival, pressed the lever until she died of exhaustion.
Based on this, Olds and Milner concluded that brain stimulation was pleasing to mice, and the electrical stimulus itself was good positive reinforcement. Two areas of the brain that were subject to stimulation were named by scientists as part of a large set of brain structures called "pleasure centers": the septal area adjacent to the corpus callosum, and a small part of the striped body - the adjacent nucleus.
Subsequently, experiments with the implantation of electrodes in the brain in the area of "pleasure center" tried to carry out on people (psychology of the 60s was not very ethical by current standards), but soon this practice was abandoned. Later, the study of "pleasure centers" led to the discovery of a substance released in the brain in the process of pleasure - dopamine.
There are several "pleasure centers" in the brain: in addition to the abovementioned departments of the limbic system, scientists also identify some parts of the cortex of the large hemispheres (for example, the orbital frontal cortex and the island fraction). The exact functions of each of them have not yet been established. In addition, "pleasure centers" are most often considered as parts of a more complex system - a set of brain structures, called the reward system. Such a system is responsible for several aspects related to receiving rewards: the desire for a pleasant stimulus, positive emotions (pleasure) in response to a pleasant stimulus, as well as the consolidation of behavior that has led to this stimulus.