Where resides the envy?

Now the science is scratching its head hard to find out brain spots for different complex emotions. Even it talks about God- spot in the brain and seperate branch called neuro-theology is brewing up.

Now the frantic search is for spots for our negative emotions. Those well-versed with the Indian epic Mahabharatha, would have known what was the chief problem of the eldest of the 100 sons, the embodiments of 100 sins. Duruyadhana suffered from Envy and he also found pleasure whenever he heard something really bad happened to the' good' five pandavas. This emotion of getting pleasure from other's misfortune is termed as schadenfreude.

Japanese scientist Takahashi, carried out an interesting experiment to find out the prime sites of these two emotions 'envy' and 'schadenfrude'. He had done fMRI to find out the activated areas in the brains of people who were given a hypothetical situations that would evoke these emotions.

For example, you are a college student who is good in studies and a cute girl(/smart guy) in your class has started showing some interest in you. Then, this handsome guy(/beautiful girl) enters the scene, who has a posh car, competitive in studies to you and in extra, he is good in sports and also has high connections with the college authorities. your cute girl's interest slowly sways towards him. Are you imagining the scene.... (even though the scene is a cliche, it often succeeds provoking the envy). Now if i do imaging to your imaging brain , the site obviously red hot in anger would be the spot of envy and that would be .... Anterior Cingulate Cortex.

This ACC is the conflict detecting part of the brain. when something happens exactly in contrast to what you have expected then this area would produce the alert signal. It also gets activated in psychic pains, for e.g, a loner's longing pain or another loner's empathetic pain of this loner.

Now imagine as a sequence of the 'cliche' story... the cute girl and that envy-provoking guy had a real nasty fight and you are hearing from all directions, the news about their fight and that guy was heart broken because he couldn't make amends with her later. Obviously you feel happy, (i.e schadenfreude) and now the hot-spot in your brain that produces this wicked pleasure is... Ventral striatum.

No surprise that Ventral striatum has a strong association with reward circuitries, hence the humans finds nothing more rewarding than the downfall of the persons they envy.