Thanks to a new field of research called interpersonal neurobiology, scientists are beginning to understand how feelings of love (or the lack of them) can impact specific areas of the brain. The evidence:
TOUCH HEALS
For a study at the University of Virginia, scientists threatened married women with an electric shock. When they held their husbands’ hands during the experiment, the women’s anterior cingulate cortexes and other pain and anxiety-related centers in the brain showed significantly less activation than when they held hands with others or with no one at all.
FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTENT
Research from Stony Brook University showed that when men and women in happy relationships looked at photographs of their partners, their brain’s pleasure center, including the accumbens, lit up. The brains of long-married couples also registered feelings of attachment and calm in the globus pallidus and other regions.
LOVE HURTS
According to Columbia University scientists, the same areas of the brain associated with physical pain, such as the dorsal posterior insula, are active when someone experiences rejection.
readersdigest.com 7/12-8/12
Family Digest
edited by Beth Dreher
