Love Hurts, Literally

Recently while reading an issue of Time, I came across an article about how the pain of a broken heart and the pain of say, burning your hand, could actually be related.


Love already works in painful ways: falling in love head over heels, and then your heart is shattered. Like many have said, it's almost like "getting punched in the gut". And according to new research, this turns out not to be too far off -- the physical pain of an injury and the emotional pain of heartache are almost identical to the human brain and body. The pain a person can feel by both of these follows along the same neural pathways.

Until recently, studies have always shown the overlap in brain activity between emotional and physical pain, but those studies focused mainly on the feelings produced by them that were about the pain, like "I never want to feel that again" response after getting a paper cut or stubbing a toe. Not up until now have any studies linked purely emotional pain sources like grief or heartbreak with any sorts of pain like, for example, grabbing a hot bowl or mug.

For scientists to have gotten these results, they took 40 volunteers that had recently been through some heartbreak of their own, and, using an MRI took images of their brain when the volunteer was shown a picture of their ex. Surprisingly, the activity in the volunteer's brain was engaging the same pain circuits as when they were probed with heat sensors -- equivalent to the pain of holding a hot cup of coffee. The researchers that conducted this experiment believed that the intensity of the subjects' emotional hurting activated sensors in the pain pathways of the brain that are mostly tapped into only by physical stimulation, such as a slap or searing heat.

Could this be the cure for heartache? Unfortunately, no. Antidotes for physical pain, such as Ibuprofen, won't do much to mend a broken heart, but these new findings at least give some excuse to the hurt not being entirely in your head.