Rita Carter, Richard Schoch and Sebastian Saville have different recipes

Take control of your brain

Conquer superstition, urges Rita Carter

Happiness is a state of mind – an experience. And experience is a physical phenomenon.

Perceptions, moods, thoughts and sensations do not exist in some mysterious spiritual dimension; they are bodily functions, some of which we can now describe in quite precise chemical and anatomical terms. Change your brain and you have changed your mind.

I propose that we do just that: use our burgeoning knowledge about the brain, along with the ingenious technology we are developing, to produce happiness directly.

Beyond chemicals

There is no question that this can be done. Mind-altering chemicals have always been used on a massive scale and in the last couple of decades millions of people have been lifted out of misery by antidepressants. They work.

Yet people hate to admit this. Those that have benefited from drugs like Prozac tend to explain the change in them by saying things like: ‘I decided to get out more’, or ‘I started counting my blessings’, or ‘I fell in love’. They offer these as causes of their transformation, without acknowledging that they would not have happened without the drug.

Altering brain function

It is true that all drugs have a downside – altering brain function by putting a chemical through the bloodstream is bound to produce side-effects and hit and miss results. Happily, though, our increasing knowledge of brain function is allowing us to use much cleaner and more precise technology. Brain implants, for example, are already showing positive results in people with severe depression.

I am not suggesting that every unhappy person should have a device put in their brain. The principle, though – altering the electrical function of the brain directly, rather than via chemicals – can be used also in non-invasive techniques. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, for example, involves merely waving a magnetic wand over the skull.

It may sound like magic, but the evidence suggests that it works.

Let’s meddle

Eventually, I believe we will use techniques like this to transform ourselves from the inside out. But I fear it will be a long time coming, because this approach is bedeviled by a kind of ‘yuk’ factor. We don’t want to believe in blatantly physical remedies for our discontents because we don’t like to acknowledge that we are entirely physical entities. Some ancient superstitious part of our brains insists that human consciousness is in some way ‘spirit stuff’ which is God-given and therefore not ours to meddle with. To do so is hubris.

This, I believe, is what really stands between us and happiness – superstition. It is time we got rid of it, and took control of our own brains.

Rita Carter is a medical writer