Causal Evidence for the Neural Underpinnings of Subjective Happiness

Abstract

Happiness is a central but poorly localized dimension of human experience, and causal evidence linking discrete brain regions to subjective happiness is scarce. We tested whether focal brain damage modulates self-reported happiness by measuring Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) scores in 131 male veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) and 33 matched healthy controls (HC), and by applying voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping within anatomically pre-defined brain regions. Overall, individuals with pTBI reported higher SHS scores than HC. VLSM identified two lesion clusters associated with increased happiness after injury: a small cluster in the right anterior cingulate cortex and a larger cluster in the right orbitofrontal cortex. These results provide causal evidence that right frontal circuitry--notably the ACC and OFC--modulates subjective happiness, challenging current accounts of motivational and emotional processing and pointing to targeted neural substrates for understanding and potentially modulating human happiness.