Suffering from a “broken heart”
New research suggests that the broken hearts seem to trigger an activity in the brain similar to suffer physical pain. “What that tells us how bad it can sometimes be rejected,” said study author Edward E. Smith, director of cognitive neuroscience at Columbia University. “When people say they really feel pain from separation, do not trivialize or downplay it saying it’s all in your mind.”
The finding could lead to a better understanding of the relationship between emotional and physical pain, Smith said. “Our ultimate goal is to see what kind of therapeutic approach could be helpful in relieving the pain of rejection.”
Previous research has shown a relationship between what Smith calls “socially-induced pain,” the guy who is experienced in dealing with others and physical pain. For the new study, Smith and colleagues looked specifically rejection. “Of all the experiences of everyday life, rejection appears to be one of the most painful,” Smith said. “It seems that feelings of rejection are maintained for longer than anger.”
And where you can find people turned away?
In the city of New York, of course, where hundreds or even thousands of relationships end each day. The researchers placed ads online and in newspapers to find people whose romantic partner had cut them. In all cases, had not wanted to break the relationship.
Were forty people who felt “deeply rejected” in the study. While researchers scanned their brains, we asked the participants to see photographs, including pictures of friends (and asked to have positive thoughts about them), and photographs of their ex boyfriends / girlfriends (and were instructed to think at the break).
Participants also underwent brain scans while they felt a pain in the forearms similar to the feeling of holding a cup of hot coffee. The findings were published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Several of the same brain areas were activated when participants felt physical or emotional pain. In fact, the two types of pain seemed to share more brain regions than previously thought, said Smith.
And what about other types of emotional pain? Do they have the same effect on the brain? Maybe not. Smith said that the rejection seems to belong to a class of pain by itself in terms of its similarity to the physical pain.
Future research could examine how the emotional pain of rejection affects how people feel physical pain, said Robert C. Coghill, an associate professor in the department of neurobiology and anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine of Wake Forest University. Do people feel rejected more pain than others? What happens after we are reminded of their refusal to look at pictures? For now one thing is clear, with or brain scan, rejection hurts.
Posted in 
Tags: