Happiness - The Role of Neurochemicals

Happiness, the feeling that occurs when you are aware that life is good, and you smile for that sole reason. Happiness is a sense of joy, well- being, pleasure, satisfaction or contentment. Happiness is influenced by several factors both exogenously and endogenously. Amongst all the endogenous determinants, the role of neurochemicals tends to be the most dependent predictor of happiness. The aim of the study was to gather these information about the neurochemicals that predominantly affects neurochemicals directly or indirectly. Several hormones, neurotransmitters and other endogenous compounds were under search to gain a significant conclusion. For this, all the already known and those yet to be known neurochemicals that influenced happiness some or the other way were searched for in the google search engine and data were obtained from certain websites like PubMed, Psychology today, Encyclopedia etc. and later these data were organized in a systematic manner to obtain 12 different neurochemicals that are influencers of happiness. The basic structures of these organic compounds were also gathered to present the idea clearly. Out of the all the 12 neurochemicals, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins were purely independent and accurate predictors of happiness and had significant role in its biochemical aspects. The remaining were found to affect happiness either indirectly or by directly stimulating the higher centers of the brain. From this, it can be concluded that the major endogenous factors that exaggerate the feeling of happiness or bring about itself are the release and actions of such neurochemicals.