As some of you may have noticed, several months ago now I
got a new boyfriend. Well, that new boyfriend is now an old boyfriend because
we broke up. As usual, I was super-fucking-stoked about the relationship, and
also as usual, I was super-fucking-wrong. I chose to respond to the crushing
feelings of despair in the only logical way – by eating a banana split for
dinner. And then I decided to blog about it.
According
to a 2005 study led by neurologist Lucy Brown, psychologist Art Aron, and
anthropologist Helen Fisher, romantic love causes a rush of dopamine into the region
of the brain associated with goal-seeking behavior and feelings of motivation. The
process of falling in love is neurologically identical to the process of
becoming addicted to drugs. Love is not a feeling; it is what scientists refer
to as a “goal-oriented motivational state” or, to put it bluntly, an addiction.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, learning this does not make me feel any better.
In 2010, the researchers set out to
discover what causes the sobbing, wailing, drinking too much, eating of
banana splits for dinner, etc. that occurs in the wake of a breakup. They
gathered up several people who had just been dumped and who reported spending
at least 85 percent of their time thinking about the lost object of their
affection and pining for reconciliation. These people admitted to an inability
to control their emotions and behavior, resulting in everything from crying for
hours, to getting drunk, to calling, texting, or emailing the ex, to turning up
at the ex’s place of work to have a go at them. I’ve been on the receiving end
of that last one before, though not this time around, so there’s that to be
thankful for.
After popping the heartbroken individuals into fMRI machines
like slices of weepy bread into a big magnetic toaster, the researchers
discovered that the lovelorn test subjects were still showing plenty of
activity in the reward centers of their brains. Like a newly ex-smoker chewing
desperately at a lollipop, the lovelorn study participants were still seeking
the “fix” of their lover’s affection. The researchers also found signs of
activity in other parts of the brain, such as those linked to controlling
emotions and behavior. Someone was lying in that fMRI machine fighting off the
urge to take a big revenge dump on the hood of someone’s Porsche. Let’s hope
they were successful.
But what causes the feelings of physical pain so commonly
referred to as a “broken heart”? Well, the short answer is, no one knows. But
according to a 2009 study from researchers at the University of Maryland
and the University of Arizona, activity in the parts of the brain related to
emotional reactivity, especially related to a particularly stressful experience
like heartbreak, can cause a “biological cascade” that overstimulates the vagus
nerve. The vagus nerve begins in the brain stem and travels down the neck into
the chest and abdomen. The researchers believe that overstimulation of this nerve
is responsible for the chest pain and nausea called “heartbreak.”
Still others think that the emotional pain of a breakup
could simultaneously trigger both the fight-or-flight response and the lesser
known opposite response, hilariously dubbed the rest-and-digest
response. The chest pain, then, would be a result of the heart struggling
to cope with hormonal commands to speed up and slow down at the same time. It’s
worth noting that it’s possible to die of a broken
heart, perhaps due to the hormonal effects of emotional stress. While
science doesn’t yet fully understand the cause of the physical sensation of
heartbreak, it’s clear that the pain of social rejection originates in the same
part of the brain as physical pain, so that, in the
words of author Meghan Laslocky, “As far as your brain is concerned, the
pain you feel is no different from a stab wound.”
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| I know how you feel, Tesco Pineapple juice. Image by NOGG3R5 from Flickr.com |
