A Happy Brain’s a Healthy Brain

Over at SharpBrains (which is a great resource for brain lovers) they’ve posted a handful of slide decks from their Virtual Summit, which was held September 19th and 20th. The topic of the summit was “How Can Neuroscience-based Innovation Enhance Behavioral & Brain Health.”

Listening to recordings form the summit requires a paid membership to the site, but the slide decks are free to view. Topics include “What are scal­able best prac­tices to spread smart health?” and “How can Big Data help upgrade brain care?” I’ve been looking at “The Future of Personal Brain Health.”

This is a slide deck that accompanied a talk, so it amounts to visual notes—I don’t have a transcript of what was said. But I found several points very intriguing. For example, Kaiser Permanente has an ad campaign that ties mental wellness to physical wellness.

Hugs = Healthy

Happy People are 50% healthier.

I’ve discussed happiness and memory before but what about overall health?

I decided to look up the science behind this, and apparently it’s related to cortisol and serotonin. Cortisol is a steroid your adrenal glands make in response to stress. Amongst other (necessary) things, cortisol suppresses immune function. And then there’s serotonin, which is “made” in the raphe nuclei of the brain, is used to regulate intestinal movement, and can effect mood. Although is not a causal relationship, cortisol is usually higher when serotonin is lower, and vice-versa.

So you if get stressed, your immune system is suppressed, you are not happy, and you get sick. If you’re not stressed, your healthy body produces serotonin, and you feel happy.

(Note that this is a one-way circle: this isn’t to say that if you make yourself happy, you will make yourself healthy.)

But back to the mind: most interesting to me is how cortisol and serotonin play a part in the formation of memory. Cortisol mixes with adrenaline to encode highly detailed short-term memories: a high-stress situation can etch a memory into a person mind. However, long-term stress can allow cortisol to impede memory function in the hippocampus. On the happier side of the coin, serotonin impacts learning and memory—until we get older, when serotonin starts to increase and alters associative memory.

So, in a nutshell, happiness is good for us, which seems obvious, but also helps us learn—but when we’re not happy, we can still learn short-term solutions to problems, to reduce stress, and get back to long-term behaviors to maintain happiness and health.