Romantic Breakups Cause Real Pain

Rejection evil literally - the experience and memory to get dumped by a loved one triggers brain regions associated with physical sensations of pain, scientists find.

Around the world people for centuries have used the same language - words like "evil" and "Pain" - to describe the mental anguish and physical suffering, leading researchers to wonder if the feelings n 'do not activate the same parts of brain.

Speculatively, it is logical that you get a broken heart can literally feel something break. During human evolution is rejected by the group can do very vulnerable, researcher Edward Smith, a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University, New York, told LiveScience, "so it could be the reason for the connection between the developed and the pain of rejection, so we want to avoid rejection. "

Previous research has not found much to recommend its rejection led to pain in areas of the brain. However, these studies have tried to provoke feelings of rejection in the test subjects, telling them they had been excluded from a computer game, for example, or anonymous comments suggested that a foreigner does not like - the examples that could lead just warm feelings of rejection. "We wanted something bigger," said Smith.

Smith and colleagues routes in Manhattan and online ads on Facebook and Craigslist in search of people who experienced unwanted break from a novel in the last six months. As the brains of 40 volunteers were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), half the time looking at photos of his ex, and half the time looking at photos of a friend. In both situations, participants were asked to focus on the experiences we share with the people in the photos.

In comparison with their reaction to physical discomfort, whether participants had probes placed on the forearms, which could be painfully hot.

The scientists found that parts of the brain linked to physical pain also comes on when people have been failures, bad memory.

"The rejection hurts literally," Smith said.

Researchers are now looking for possible techniques to relieve mental suffering, including methods that therapists are already using. "For example, a table when you think of the refusal to consider the experiences with a former partner as an outsider in the distance," Smith said. "We want to see if it actually helps the brain."

Smith did not recommend aspirin for pain like that. "An hour later, you might start thinking about that person," he said.

The researchers detailed their findings online Monday (March 28) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.