Slashdot Mirror
Physical Pain and Emotional Pain Use Same Brain Networks
Antipater writes "To the brain, heartbreak and emotional torment are no different from having hot coffee spilled on your hand, reports CNN. They cite a recent study from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which 40 recently-dumped men and women underwent fMRI scans while having their arm burned or being shown a picture of their ex. The stimuli produced nearly identical brain reactions."
A lot of inspiration can be found in seemingly bizarre experiments.
A lot of inspiration can be found in seemingly bizarre experiments.
For instance, with the properly constructed experiment, we could finally figure out "How many marketing people does it take to change a lightbulb?"
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
Yet I, having suffered both, would rather the boot to the head.
Different people value equivalent things differently. News at 11.
agreed. pain from a boot to the head fades faster.
What about the brain activity when your ex burns your arm?
but the same brain you are talking about has a "would you rather" processor - and mine would rather suffer an emotional heartbreak than a boot to the head
I have suffered tremendous psychological pain because of mental illness and I think I'd prefer physical pain... hell, one way of making your brain let go of mental anguish is to hurt yourself, cut, burn, whatever. Then you can focus on the throbbing pain of the cigarette burn, overriding the mental pain, and it is heaven compared to severe anxiety/panic.
I don't know why parent is being modded up and the AC down. It's not like the researchers are saying to one another, "seeing as being dumped feels exactly like spilling hot coffee one the hand, we should check if this is backed by brain scans". You say that you know that the difference is, in fact, detectable between the two by adequate brain scanning equipment. You back this up by saying that the experiences feel different. That is as ridiculous as saying that you've rubbed charcoal and diamonds on paper, and you know they're different elements.
--
Goes to show how crude our current scanning techniques are.
That'n no true. What is however true is the /.-ers seldom read TFA.
I've burned my hand before and the sensation was quite different from being dumped.
Now, form the second FA:
a network of brain regions that support the aversive quality of physical pain (the “affective” component), principally the dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) and anterior insula (AI), also underlie the feeling of social rejection. In contrast, the brain regions that support the somatic representation of physical pain, and are most closely aligned with the “sensory-discriminative” component—including the operculo-insular region [i.e., secondary somatosensory cortex (S2) and dorsal posterior insula (dpINS)]—are not activated by social rejection and do not factor into current theorizing about the neural overlap between social rejection and physical pain (1, 2).
Translation: yes, the main areas activated in "affective pain" and "physical pain" are different.
As plausible as this rationale is, here we suggest an alternative: that the neural overlap between social rejection and physical pain is more extensive than current findings suggest. Specifically, we propose that experiences of social rejection, when elicited powerfully enough, recruit brain regions involved in both the affective and sensory components of physical pain.
Which, applied to your case, seems to indicate that your feeling of social rejection was not powerful enough. That... hints a bit about you or the strength of your relation, isn't it?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
heartbreak and emotional torment are no different from having hot coffee spilled on your hand
If you've seen the price of coffee at Starbucks recently, spilling some would definitely be grounds for feeling emotional trauma.
Have gnu, will travel.
Think of pain in a psychological, adaptive sense, where it's an undesirable stimulus that lessens the chance we will perform some kind of behavior again. I think that's what is being picked up by an MRI. Not the immediate reflex that causes you to pull your hand away from the glowing red thing on the stove, but the part that causes it to hurt afterward, leaving a strong memory of the situation.
However, I did have a psychology professor last quarter tell the class you can lessen the effect of a break-up by taking pain medication. He said that most anti-inflammatory medications are believed to affect a certain part of the brain, which is incidentally the same place triggered by a break-up. He told us this right after Valentine's day, apologizing for not getting to that point in the curriculum a day sooner.
This remind's me of something a teacher from primary school used to say...
"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will always hurt me."
- Penny Sinclaire
I remember this profoundly affecting me at the time, because people had always stated the converse (that "names will never hurt me"), blew my mind at the time.
It must have affected me so much, that to this day, I still remember it some 20+ years later.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
But I've actually been through a lot or relationships. Everything from one-night stands to one-week stands to three-month torrid affairs to engagement to even one marriage. And I've had a lot of injuries (two shootings, about a dozen stab wounds, gone face-first through 2 windshields, caught on fire twice, etc. ; I've been in a lot of fights [including the knife fights, whether I had a knife or not...and, yes, I came out on top in all of those or I'd be dead], not all of which I won [but the majority of them I did, but when I lost, I lost pretty badly...most real fights are over in less than 10 seconds, regardless of what Hollywood would have you believe], combat, you name it).
And while a one-night or one-week stand going bad isn't a big deal, finding out that the women that you've fallen in love with over the past 3 months to 3 years is either (a) leaving or (b) done something so off-the-reservation that you can't stand to have her around anymore, love or no love, is more painful than any injury I've ever sustained. Hell, I carried a torch for 12 years for one woman (and even got back together with her when we met up again after about 11 or those years), and it almost drove me insane when I broke up with her for the second time. Something that no amount of physical pain has ever driven me to, that experience almost did. It took me about 10 months to get to the point where I realized that everything bad I saw coming out in her (self-centered, inconsiderate, unwillingness to concede that she might be wrong no matter what evidence was stacked against her, unreasonable demands, etc.) that caused me to break up with her 12 years ago had changed from simple flaws to dominant personality traits in the intervening time. Until I realized that, I dreamed about her, wrote about her (one of my hobbies is writing), and she was never far from my thoughts (except for the rare times that I was with someone else who ensnared my heart the way she had, and none of those lasted longer than a few years).
I would most definitely say that (and other similar events) that is far more painful to me than getting shot, stabbed, or caught on fire. Physical pain is nothing compared to the hell that one's emotions and attachments can put one through. Think about it - when torturing someone, it's often far more effective to work on their emotions and mind than it is to cause them physical injury. Ask any vet whether waiting for something bad to happen (pre-battle jitters, being in a precarious position, walking into a potential ambush) is worse than anything that happens to you when the shoe drops. Everyone I know (and I can't think of a single man in my family that I know of that hasn't served in the military at one time or another, and in every single war of the past 100 years in many cases) that's been in those situations will tell you that your mind can do worse things to you than anything else.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
You are having flashbacks decades later over some "broken heart"? Sorry, but you sound like a pussy who really needs to grow a sack. Women are simply holes for men to relieve themselves into, much like public toilets. Never forget this.
Take heed gentlemen, this anonymous internet commenter has all the traits women desire but chooses to bestow his wisdom onto us.
In my opinion, any ethically run study on the mechanisms of pain and how they might be linked or related to the mechanisms of depression are a Good Thing
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj