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.

The Brain Case for Happiness

Recently we posted a brief discussion of the effect of sadness on memory. Now let’s discuss happiness.

Turns out, happiness is good for your brain. And this seems obvious, but there’s proof in the form of real-time brain scans, and the long-term effect happiness has on improved cognition.

The case for sadness says that when people are sad, they are more likely to create more accurate memories. This is not in contradiction to the case that happiness improves cognition. It’s like saying that concentrating on painting can make you remember the details, while being happy an make you a better painter.

Nor is the case that you have to decide between one or the other. The case for sadness suggests that rather than be worried about the occasional sad moment, know that it can allow for increased concentration and the formation of reliable memories.

Those moments of sadness are the exception that prove the rule of general happiness. A happiness which makes your mind better at doing—well, whatever it is you want to do.

So, consider this: having fun makes you happy, and being happy makes your brain work better. Incorporating fun into learning makes the learning that much more effective. It’s a win-win.

Your Brain Isn’t Forgetful, It’s Just Happy

If ignorance is bliss than is bliss ignorance? Maybe, according to scientists.

Its been known for a while now that one difference between depression and elation is the brain’s tendency to focus in the former and flit from through to thought in the other. This is something we’ve all experienced: when we’re sad, we sometimes feel like we can’t think about anything except whatever’s getting us down.

Experiments and tests on this have been thoroughly performed to find all kinds of effects. Some experiments have even shown how people who were in sad moods remembered more and better details in certain situations than those who were neutral or happy. Those who were in good moods were more likely to add extraneous or inaccurate details.

This makes sense, considering the associative network which our brain uses to learm process, and store memories. If a person is happy, she’ll associate an experience with more different thoughts than someone who is sad, dwelling on only one thought.

So how do we use this phenomena? It’s less a matter of what we can do in advance, than he we go about evaluating someone’s memories. Its not likely that we can “make” ourselves sad so that we are better equipped to remember a given experience.

But we can note that, if there are inconsistencies in our recall, maybe that’s proof we had a good time!