Brain Microstructural Properties Related to Subjective Well-Being: Diffusion Tensor Imaging Analysis.

Although it is known that health is not merely the absence of disease, the positive aspects of mental health have been less comprehensively researched compared with its negative aspects. Subjective well-being is one of the indicators of positive psychology, and high subjective well-being is considered to benefit individuals in multiple ways. However, the neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in subjective well-being remain unclear, particularly in terms of brain microstructural properties as detected by diffusion tensor imaging. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between measurements of diffusion tensor imaging (mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy) and the degree of subjective well-being as measured using a questionnaire. Voxel-based analysis was used to investigate the association between mean diffusivity and subjective well-being scores in healthy young adults (age, 20.7 ± 1.8 years; 695 males and 514 females). Higher levels of subjective well-being were found to be associated with lower mean diffusivity in areas surrounding the right putamen, insula, globus pallidus, thalamus, and caudate. These results indicated that individual subjective well-being is associated with variability in brain microstructural properties.