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."

Comments

Re:Yeah - maybe if you look at it in a silo

[ustolemyname]

Yet I, having suffered both, would rather the boot to the head.

Different people value equivalent things differently. News at 11.

Re:Yeah - maybe if you look at it in a silo

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Heartbreak and torment

[PPH]

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.

Re:Yeah - maybe if you look at it in a silo

[definate]

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.

I know this seems anathema to /.

[painehope]

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.

Re:In other news...

[morethanapapercert]

I don't find this story bizarre, quite the opposite in fact. I think this research might be able to shed light on some; as-yet poorly understood, sources of pain, such as Fibromyalgia. Right now, the only real treatment for Fibromyalgia is an anti-depressant called Cymbalta. In the words of my doctor "for a large minority of cases, this drug helps, but we don't know how or why" (for the record, I am among those for whom it is not very effective unfortunately)

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