Brain thinks ‘your pain, my gain’ (and vice versa)

[David Morris]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5916/937

Your gain, my pain? New research from Japan shows that the human brain
treats feelings of envy like physical pain, while schadenfreude — the
pleasure derived from another person's misfortune — triggers the
brain's reward circuits. The findings, published in the February 13
online edition of Science magazine, suggest our brains may be wired to
treat abstract feelings much more like concrete physical experiences
than was previously thought.