Investigators of the University of Michigan (US) have revealed to a magazine called “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS) that physical pain and intense feelings caused by social rejection can hurt us in the same way. Their investigation proves that the brain regions which respond to painful sensorial experiences are also activated during the intense experiences of social rejection.
To reach this conclusion, Dr. Cross and his colleagues interviewed forty people who had suffered from a break-up in the last six months. All of them confessed that when they were thinking about the breaking-up experience they felt absolutely rejected.
Every participant completed two tasks in the study. One of the tasks was related to their feelings of rejection; the other one was related to the feelings which generate a painful, but tolerable, stimulus (such as when we have our hand in a cup of hot coffee).
Participants carried out all the tasks while they were being subjected to Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Doctors realized that the strong feelings of rejection were able to activate the brain regions which are involved in physical pain feeling. Surprisingly, both painful experiences and social rejection feeling come into operation neurons in the secondary somatosensory cortex and the dorsal posterior insula.
In any case, the final results agree with the popular wisdom, because, as everyone knows, almost all cultures use similar terms to describe experiences of physical pain and experiences of social rejection as well, such as “pain” or “hurt”.
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