PAIN FROM REJECTION , PHYSICAL PAIN MAY NOT BE SO SIMILAR AFTER ALL
Over the last decade,
neuroscientists have largely come to believe that physical pain and social pain
are processed by the brain in the same way. But a new study led by the
University of Colorado shows that the two kinds of pain actually use distinct
neural circuits, a finding that could lead to more targeted treatments and a
better understanding of how the two kinds of pain interact.
For the study,
published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers
used a technique recently borrowed from the computer science field by
neuroscientists--multivariate pattern analysis--to examine brain scans that
were taken while people looked at a picture of someone who had rejected them.
The results were compared to brain scans made of the same people when they were
receiving a painful heat stimulus.
"Physical pain
and social rejection do activate similar regions of the brain," said
CU-Boulder graduate student Choong-Wan Woo, lead author of the study. "But
by using a new analysis tool, we were able to look more closely and see that
they are actually quite different."
A study published in
2003 in the journal Science laid the foundation for the theory
that social pain--resulting from rejection, isolation or loss--piggybacks on
the brain systems used to represent physical pain. The belief that the two types
of pain are neurologically the same has led to some new ideas about how to
treat social pain, including using traditional painkillers, such as
acetaminophen, to try and ease emotional suffering.
The results of the new
study are important because they could help understand how social pain can be
measured objectively, and how the brain creates these uniquely distressing
experiences. Ultimately, this could help direct scientists and clinicians
toward prevention and treatment options that make the most sense for social
pain.
"Though there are
some similar psychological features between physical pain and social pain, they
appeared to be quite different in the brain," said Woo, of CU-Boulder's
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. "If we find that social pain is
more similar to sadness or depression in the brain than physical pain, that
could affect treatment options."
The findings could
help scientists better understand the structure of emotion in the brain and how
emotions are regulated. The study also is an important step in allowing
researcher to test how the two types of pain interact, which could shed light
on known relationships between emotions and physical pain, such as the
connection between pain disorders and emotional trauma.
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