From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sat 11 Oct 2003 - 02:19:51 GMT
Why a broken heart hurts so
much
Social rejection may affect brain as much as physical
pain
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/978061.asp?vts=101020031656
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 A rejected lovers
broken heart may cause as much distress in
a pain center of the brain as an actual
physical injury, according to new research.
CALIFORNIA RESEARCHERS have found a physiological basis
for social pain by monitoring the brains of people who thought
they had been maliciously excluded from a computer game by
other players.
Naomi I. Eisenberger, a scientist at the University of California,
Los Angeles and the first author of the study to be published
Friday in the journal Science, said the study suggests that the need
for social inclusiveness is a deep-seated part of what it means to
be human.
These findings show how deeply rooted our need is for social
connection, said Eisenberger. Theres something about
exclusion from others that is perceived as being as harmful to our
survival as something that can physically hurt us, and our body
automatically knows this.
Eisenberger and her co-authors created a computer game in which
test subjects were led to believe they were playing ball with two
other players. At some point, the other players seemed to exclude
the test subject from the game making it appear the test subject
had been suddenly rejected and blocked from playing with the
group.
The shock and distress of this rejection registered in the same part
of the brain, called the anterior cingulate cortex, that also
responds to physical pain, Eisenberger said.
The ACC is the same part of the brain that has been found to be
associated with the unpleasantness of physical pain, the part of
pain that really bothers us, Eisenberger said.
Eisenberger said the study suggests that social exclusion of any
sort divorce, not being invited to a party, being turned down
for a date would cause distress in the ACC.
You can imagine that this part of the brain is active any time we
are separated from our close companions, she said. It would
definitely be active when we experience a loss, such as a death or
the end of a love affair.
In a commentary in Science, Jaak Panksepp of the department of
psychology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said
earlier studies have shown that the anterior cingulate cortex is
linked to physical pain.
He said the new study by Eisenberger and her co-authors
demonstrates that the ACC is also activated by the distress of
social exclusion.
Throughout history poets have written about the pain of a broken
heart, Panksepp said in his commentary. It seems that such
poetic insights into the human condition are now supported by
neurophysiological findings.
The tendency to feel rejection as an acute pain may have
developed in humans as a defensive mechanism for the species,
said Eisenberger.
Because we have such a long time as infants and need to be
taken care of, it is really important that we stay close to the social
group. If we dont were not going to survive, said Eisenberger.
The hypothesis is that the social attachment system that makes
sure we dont stray too far from the group piggybacked onto the
pain system to help our species survive.
This suggests that the need to be accepted as part of a social group
is as important to humans as avoiding other types of pain, she
said.
Just as an infant may learn to avoid fire by first being burned,
humans may learn to stick together because rejection causes
distress in the pain center of the brain, said Eisenberger.
If it hurts to be separated from other people, then it will prevent
us from straying too far from the social group, she said.
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