Why a happy brain performs better?

What can neuroscience tell us about the well-being of people and nations? Is a happy brain a more productive brain?

Keys to increasing our levels of well-being and building happiness in times of pandemic

The economic and social progress of a country is often measured by estimating the productivity, growth or longevity of the population. These indicators are used to make decisions and guide policy. However, do these metrics tell us about people and their well-being? Today governments and organizations are increasingly focusing on increasing people’s happiness, overall satisfaction with life, and sense of purpose. Neurosciences, together with other disciplines, offer great potential to try to understand the neurological bases of well-being and contribute with key aspects for its personal and social construction in different areas and moments of life.

With this approach, and taking into account the unprecedented difficulties that the pandemic brought, the INECO Foundation carried out the First International Virtual Symposium on Neuroscience and Well-being. On October 28, researchers of international recognition, experts in cognitive sciences, education, sociology, economics and music therapy, among other disciplines, met virtually to share the latest research in mental health and provide practical tools to cope with the impact that has generated COVID-19. Virtuality, the protagonist of these times, allowed the enormous participation of the public: there were more than 17,000 people from 40 countries registered for the talks.

Facundo Manes, founder of the INECO Foundation, was the first speaker of the afternoon and began his talk by explaining how well-being, a broad term used daily, can be approached from a scientific point of view. “It is not easy to define something as happiness or well-being since they are complex constructs. Many times it is convenient to decompose it, not to minimize or reduce it, but to understand it more clearly ”. One of the notable research focuses of neurosciences has been the determination of the reward circuits in the brain – keys to pleasure and desire -, mechanisms that involve different brain regions and that are communicated through chemical messengers. These circuits are activated when we carry out a pleasant activity or fulfill a goal. But after that task is done, what happens to us? How long does this well-being last?

Happiness is not given only by immediate pleasure, hedonic life, the satisfaction that a meal, a landscape, a meeting with friends can provide us. But also for the satisfaction that long-term achievements give us, fruits that arise from the effort of work and planning: eudaimonic happiness. Manes reminds us that our brains are constantly changing and that each one of us can positively influence these changes: the decisions we make on a daily basis influence our health, our projects and our happiness. While there are studies that show that genetics can determine a proportion of our well-being, this influence is not more than 30%, which means that we can modify it since happiness is built.

And how do we make that well-being happen to us? Some of the key aspects mentioned by Facundo Manes are:

Accept negative emotions and recognize the complexity of life: it means that we are connected with what is happening to us.
Work on the way we think and express our feelings, reducing negative thoughts. “Change the way we feel by changing the way we think.”
Set and achieve realistic goals.
Savor ordinary positive events.
Have healthy habits: physical activity reinforces our creative thinking, it is a good anxiolytic and natural antidepressant. Eating a healthy diet and taking care of your sleep is also important. Sleep between 7 or 8 hours.
Regulate the demands of the environment to our real possibilities: sometimes saying that it is not healthy.
Manage our expectations.
Promote spirituality and sense of purpose.
Meditate, enjoy the present. A brain attentive to the present is a happier and more productive brain.
Be grateful for what you have instead of worrying about what we lack.

At the end of his talk, Manes affirms that we should not think of well-being as something that we have or do not have, but that it is a continuum, and that people can make internal modifications to build happiness if we focus on positive emotions, in carrying out activities in which we lose the notion of time and space, such as cooking, dancing, singing and other activities that lead us to the state of “flow”, a psychological state where even the notion of oneself is diluted. In turn, consolidating intimate and affectionate human relationships is fundamental since we are social beings. Although today in a pandemic we must fulfill a physical distancing, we must remain connected with our loved ones. «Being altruistic or generous activates the pleasure centers. Generous people report having more friends, putting up with life’s obstacles more, and being more resilient. An unhappy brain is a less intelligent, less creative and less productive brain ”, he concluded.

Although this approach focuses on what each person can do individually, during the Symposium this point of view was supplemented with the idea that, although happiness is subjective, it can be measured and related to trends in societies. Beyond the fact that happiness can be worked by individuals, it is closely related to public policies. Facundo Manes explains that the concern for well-being and happiness has spread to other disciplines, such as economics. The World Economic Forum argues that a different economic model must be generated, one that meets the basic needs of all human beings on the planet, respects natural resources, is fairer and whose main objective is not growth per se but to optimize human well-being.

In the same vein, Florencia López Boo, economist and leader in the IDB’s Division of Social Protection and Health, made his presentation, who spoke about the development of public policies for the “new normal”. How to make people lose their fear of going to the doctor for check-ups or going to school after the isolation? Designing effective interventions requires understanding how the pandemic affected people’s minds and behavior. Florencia shared a work carried out by the IDB together with the INECO Foundation in which the impact of the pandemic and confinement on the mental health of the Argentine population was investigated. It was found that more than a third of the participants presented symptoms of depression or anxiety during the first week after the start of quarantine and that the groups most affected in relation to the impact on mental health are young people and people with lower incomes.

Another study shared by López Boo, and carried out jointly between the IDB and the Secretariat of Innovation and Technology of São Paulo, aims to find out what are the effective interventions to promote the use of masks, social distancing and encourage people to stay at home. “Simplifying communication, unifying government messages and taking advantage of messages from family and friends are strategies for the design of effective public policies at this time,” he concluded. Knowing these trends and the state of mental health of the population is important to prevent infections, in addition to impacting the well-being of people.

Marita Carballo, President of the World Public Opinion Association and President of the National Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, focused her presentation on the map of world happiness, identifying the factors that correlate with it and showing how policies Public institutions can contribute to creating the environment and conditions for greater well-being. “Happiness differs from one country to another and over time, due to reasons that are identifiable and that in many cases can be influenced by public policies, such as health, education, family relations or freedom of expression,” he says. Carballo. What can the governments of the region do to improve the well-being of the population at this time of a pandemic? The focus has to be on physical and mental health policies. It is essential that everyone can have access to psychological treatments and help people develop skills to deal with these situations that arise.

At the same time, there were notable presentations by experts in music therapy, technology and exercise neurophysiology who, in addition to inviting reflection on the neuroscience of well-being, provided tools both at the individual and community level. The repercussions of those attending the Symposium did not take long to be noticed on social networks that were flooded with comments of appreciation. It is very possible that going through this pandemic will make us more altruistic, more grateful and more empathetic. But for this to happen, in an extremely difficult and unique context, it becomes imperative to share scientific knowledge to build resilience and to address well-being.

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