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Build Your Own Happiness!

....But Could You Inject It?

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Being happy. According to many, it is our life-long purpose and intrinsic motivation as humans get up every day. And yet, if our brains were somehow “programmed” to live by this feeling, why do we strive so much to reach it? Or is it, instead, that we are always actually happy, but we have given happiness a distinct, unreachable meaning to fit in our fast-paced, fairly superficial society?

 

I don’t pretend to discuss what happiness is or should be according to the human rationale - leave that to eternally ongoing philosophical discussions. I will rather explore the proven principles on which humanity has agreed: science, especially neuroscience in this case. 

And now you are probably thinking about neurotransmitters. I know, neuroscience = neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters seem to be, to the common knowledge, the foundation of all brain interactions. Words like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, or melatonin are likely to be heard from an early age. Almost certainly, any kid entering their teenage years has heard about them and knows they are somehow related to the brain. However - be it due to the almost advertising-style in which neurotransmitters are mentioned or lack of neuroscience units covered in high school - there is rather little understanding about their real role.

Let me burst your bubble: the above-mentioned neurotransmitters have rather minuscule roles in the nervous system, and they are neither the most crucial nor the most abundant ones. Don’t get me wrong; they are, indeed, essential for the major pathways of sensory transduction (that is, electrical signals that carry information about sensations passing in neuron circuits), but the non-scientific perception of their role may be overrated.  

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Let’s take serotonin as an example. It is often referred to as the “happy” neurotransmitter. If 

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taken from non-academic sources, it is almost glorified, claiming its perfect concentration balance should be enhanced to allow a perfect state of happiness. Indeed, certain concentrations of it maintain muscle relaxation and low secretion of stress hormones, but so does cannabis. So does morphine (a common pain drug). If serotonin were that crucial for brain processes associated with happiness, why can similar chemicals replace its action? For instance, why wouldn’t a “serotonin shot” - just as you take flu shots - keep us happy?

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Even if such a shot could cross the blood-brain barrier (a membrane that selects what substances enter the cerebrospinal fluid from the blood), those serotonin molecules would probably just wander around until they are decomposed by astrocytes (these “guardian cells” of the brain). But why?

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Well, the real magic behind neurotransmitter action is not the molecule itself, but its transmission process: how it is released, captured, and the cellular response it generates. This explains why serotonin’s (as happens with its fellow neurotransmitters) action can be mimicked: when its same cellular response is triggered. And this reveals what is most amazing about neural communication: the neuron receptors (which are proteins in the neuron cell membranes) and the signals they generate. These proteins have incredibly specific shapes and chemical properties that bind specific molecules - in this case neurotransmitters - and then start a chain of

chemical reactions in the cell. Almost as in a domino effect, only when the receptor is “initiated” by sticking to its neurotransmitter, many signal molecules are activated inside the cell - and somehow, acting all of these cellular signals in certain areas of the brain in conjunction, we “feel”. 

 

This is why sadly though, “happy shots” of “happy neurotransmitters” are not (yet) realistic. In fact, triggering such a complex sensation would require to understand down to the finest detail the exact chemical pathways involved. It has proven to be such a hard problem, that computers and AI have been necessary to decipher these neural networks. 

 

It may take long, but perhaps we will be one day able to make these “emotion vaccines”. And now I leave you to your own thoughts: knowing these vaccines can control under standardized, “healthy” measures, but will inevitably limit any extremes of feelings that may be normal to experience once in a while. Would you take it?

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By Alejandra Durán, 10B

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