Love Takes Up Where Pain Leaves Off, Brain Study Shows

According to a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, intense feelings of love can provide amazingly effective pain relief, similar to painkillers or illicit drugs such as cocaine. This is one of the numerous endeavors into how the so-called rewards system of the brain influences pain, and specifically, the deep old systems in the brain involving dopamine, a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation. Scientists have discovered that the areas of the brain activated by intense love are the same areas that drugs use to reduce pain. The study intentionally focused on the early phase of passionate love, since these subjects would be feeling the most euphoric and energetic about their beloved. Thus, the researchers recruited 15 undergraduate students for the study, which also tested distraction in addition to love as another method for coping with pain for comparison. Results showed that both love and distraction equally diminished pain, but the two methods of pain reduction used very dissimilar brain conduits. In distraction techniques, the brain pathways leading to pain relief were mainly cognitive and were associated with higher, cortical parts of the brain. Conversely, love-induced analgesia resulted in much greater association with the reward centers, involving more primitive features of the brain and activating deep structures that may block pain at a spinal level -- similar to the function of opioid analgesics, such as morphine and codeine. The results also concluded that one of the primary sites for this phenomenon is the nucleus accumbens, a key reward addiction center/primitive brain structure for opioids, cocaine and other drugs of abuse. This region tells the brain to continue what the body is doing, similar to a positive feedback loop. This study and ones like it may pave the way for pain relieving without the side effects of drugs.

I found this article interesting because it focuses on a cheaper, faster, and more efficient way of treating pain without any side effects. Since millions of Americans, including myself, suffer from some type of chronic pain or another, a discovery such as this could save pain sufferers and the medical industry incredibly large amounts of money from being put into physical therapy and pain-relieving drugs. I am also fascinated by the continued progress of research on the brain and its functions and connections after discussing the neurological aspects of physiology in class and in SNBALS. In this case, the relation between pain and love is a complex process that is sure to lead to more discoveries down the road.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101013173843.htm