Jim Pace

Why emotional pain can physically hurt…

March 29, 2011 | 3 Comments

In Should We Fire God, I go into a bit of detail about mirror neurons.  Some people refer to them as our empathy gene.

In a nutshell, if you watch me prick my finger with a pin, you cringe along with me.  Partially because it is a bit gross, 🙂  but not just because of that.  To many in the cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology fields, those neurons trigger a similar response in the viewer as in the one engaging in the action itself.  Simply put, if you watch me prick my finger, your body is aware that it isn’t your finger that was pricked, but only mostly aware.  Your body responds as if it were hurt as well, just to a lesser degree.

It’s fascinating.

Want to hear about another unexpected connection our body makes?

In a similar way, the emotional pain of romantic rejection, the “it’s not you it’s me” speech, seems to also trigger a surprising response.  Whereas the general thinking has been that romantic rejection most directly would register in the affective centers of the brain (the emotional control centers), that would seem to not be fully the case.

In research out of the University of Michigan (go Big Blue) a team has discovered that the parts of the brain that light up when hot water was poured on a subjects arm also light up when a subject would view an image depicting their social rejection.

I haven’t seen the peer reviews of this study yet, and I know from my past research that studies like this are notoriously difficult to interpret as the human brain is incredibly complex.  But what this does show is that emotional pain registers similarly to physical pain.  Emotional hurt can trigger similar responses as physical pain.  A fascinating demonstration of the connectedness between our emotional and physical worlds!

If only it worked the other way as well… having an orthopedic surgeon set and cast a broken leg is much more expensive than eating a tub of Rocky Road and listening to “I can’t fight this feeling anymore!”

But, broken leg or no, if you are now jonesing for some REO Speedwagon, here you go.  As always, you are welcome.

Peace, Jim

Categories: life, Should We Fire God?