Researchers in a certain country recruited college students to study their emotions and brain activity  first, they were asked to read stories that inspire jealousy and schadenfreude, and then the changes of brain blood flow were measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
They found that jealousy was related to the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex, schadenfreude was associated with the activity of the striatum, and that the more active the anterior cingulate cortex was when jealousy occurred, the more active the striatum
People who like to be schadenfreude have higher striatal activity than those who like jealousy.