The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
And we have to consider also that feelings and emotions are contextual. In some cultures showing a lot of joy or a lot of sadness is entirely appropriate, in other cultures it's considered inappropriate. So I don't think it's fair to say that there is a sadness circuit or area of the brain or a happiness circuit or area of the brain.
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Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
For years, it was thought that there might be circuits, meaning connections in the brain that generate the feeling of being happy or circuits that generate the feeling of being sad, et cetera. That's been challenged. In fact, Lisa Feldman Barrett has been the person who's really challenged this head-on, and has very good evidence for the fact that such circuits probably don't exist.