Plato and Aristotle walk into a bar: carving nature at its joints to investigate psychological well-being

What it means to be well is a central human question. Psychological well-being can be operationalized along six domains: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Although the fields of neuroscience and psychology have devoted much more attention to the investigation of human suffering and unhappiness than to the determinants of positive functioning, recent work has begun to investigate various correlates of psychological well-being. The current study aimed to examine the neural correlates of psychological well-being. In particular, this work aimed to examine if there is a relationship between the location of brain damage and self-reported psychological well-being in patients who have experienced a neurological event. We found no differences in psychological well-being between individuals with neurological damage, people with a history of cancer, or healthy comparison participants. However, additional analyses showed a relationship between psychological well-being and brain damage in the medial prefrontal cortex of the right brain. Specifically, damage to this area was associated with higher levels of positive relations with others and purpose in life. Understanding the neural correlates of well-being could have important future clinical implications, especially when considered in tandem with other correlates of well-being.