Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Neuroscience Letters journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neulet The neural correlates of hedonic and eudaimonic happiness: An fMRI study Tommaso Costa a,b,c, ⁎ , Angelo Carlo Suardi d , Matteo Diano a,c,e , Franco Cauda a,b,c , Sergio Duca a,b,c , Maria Luisa Rusconi d , Igor Sotgiu d a GCS fMRI, Koelliker Hospital, Corso G. Ferraris, 247, 10124, Turin, Italy b FocusLab, University of Turin, Via Verdi, 10, 10124, Turin, Italy c Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Verdi, 10, 10124, Turin, Italy d Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo, Piazzale S.Agostino, 2, 24129, Bergamo, Italy e Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology, CoRPS – Center of Research on Psychology in Somatic Diseases, Tilburg University, 5000LE Tilburg, the Netherlands ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Anterior cingulate cortex Eudaimonic happiness Hedonic happiness fMRI Imagination task Right precentral gyrus ABSTRACT The current study investigated the neural correlates of both hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. Seventeen students underwent fMRI while cued with written sentences describing three classes of life events: Hedonic events (HE), eudaimonic events (EE) and neutral events (NE). We asked participants to imagine and empathize with all these event types. Results showed that, compared to NE, both HE and EE activated a network involving frontal, temporal and parietal regions, as well as subcortical structures. However, in the HE/EE comparison, HE showed enhanced activity in frontal medial/middle regions and anterior cingulate cortex; by contrast, EE showed increased activity in the right precentral gyrus. Findings suggest that hedonic and eudaimonic happiness activate similar neural correlates. However, both kinds of happiness are also associated with distinctive brain areas serving distinctive functions. 1. Introduction During the last two decades, numerous neuroimaging studies of emotion were conducted considering emotion like anger, fear, sadness and happiness [42]. Overall, happiness was related to different brain areas, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC), orbitofrontal cortex, cin- gulate gyrus, ventral striatum, right superior and middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) [38,42]. The autobiographical recall method was widely used to induce happiness in both PET [13,21] and fMRI studies [9,25,34]. The results show common patterns of increased activity in PFC, ACC, and insula [38]. These areas have been linked to specific psychological functions like self-relevant mental activity [12], reward processing [19], re- presentation of decision values [10], emotional processing [42], and interoceptive memories [8]. It has been demonstrated that autobiographical memory shares psychological and neural processes with episodic future thinking, namely the ability of traveling into one’s personal future [2]. Brain regions activated during both recall of past events and future thinking include: i) occipital cortex, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and medial temporal lobes [2]: ii) two subsystems, one formed by the anterior hippocampus, medial PFC, and inferior frontal gyrus more active during imagination of future events and another formed by the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and posterior visual cortex more active during retrieval of past events [1]. Other studies [39] reported greater acti- vation of the hippocampus, lateral premotor cortex, medial posterior parietal cortex, and posterior cerebellum during imagination versus memory tasks. Some overlaps can be detected between the network involved in mental time travel and the default mode network (DMN) [6]. Research about mental simulation is still at an early stage and, most importantly, little is known about imagination of positive events. We found few studies on this topic [32,40]. Overall, they showed that imagining positive events is associated with the activation of specific neural sites, including ventral and dorsomedial PFC, rostral ACC, amygdala, and PCC. Within contemporary positive psychology [17], hedonic happiness has been identified with pleasure and positive emotions. Conversely, eudaimonic happiness is what we feel when pursuing meaningful goals and expressing our best potentials. Notably, the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic happiness is rooted in the ancient Hellenic philosophy: the concept of hedonic happiness derives from the Cyrenaic School. However, the concept of eudaimonic happiness was first https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2019.134491 Received 17 April 2019; Received in revised form 21 August 2019; Accepted 9 September 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Verdi, 10, 10124, Turin, Italy. E-mail address: tommaso.costa@unito.it (T. Costa). Neuroscience Letters 712 (2019) 134491 Available online 10 September 2019 0304-3940/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T