Who would have thought that the euphoria we feel when we’re falling in love could actually help with pain relief? A recent study conducted at Stanford University in the US has found that viewing a picture of a loved one can actually stimulate a stronger pain-relief response than the typical ‘distraction’ tests that have previously been trialed. So maybe all those hours you spent fantasizing over that new love-interest could have been helping you relieve your own pain.
The study, conducted on 15 students at university in the United States who described themselves as “intensely in love”, measured the response to pain that each student felt when they looked at a photo of the person they were romantically involved with. To balance the results, measurements in response to pain were also taken when the students looked at photos of another similarly attractive person who they were acquainted with but not romantically involved with and also in response to pain when a simple word-association distraction test was conducted.
All of these conditions were tested at three levels of pain to further substantiate the results. The “pain” which the students were subjected to was differing levels of exposure to heat through a thermal stimulator attached to their left hand. Each student was measured individually to gauge what levels of temperature would cause differing levels of discomfort and they were then subjected to 15 second blocks of the different levels of heat exposure.
The student’s responses to the stimuli were mapped by the MRI imaging of the brain in response to pain in the three conditions the study set up. The scientists conducting the study looked at both the areas of the brain that determine reward responses, or pleasure centres, and those areas of the brain that deal with analgesics- or in other words, painkillers.
In almost all instances, the measurements found that the response to viewing a photo of a person’s loved-one created a greater amount of activity in the areas of the brain that are associated with reward and pain management. Most importantly though, the study found that the response to viewing a picture of a loved one can actually be stronger and more effective in stimulating pain-relief than distraction tests that have long been accepted in the scientific community.
In a recent interview with Tracie White for Science Daily, one of the authors of the study Dr Sean Mackey, a professor at Stanford School of Medicine, said that it was important for the study to focus on younger and more passionate forms of love, which was where the feelings of euphoria were more strongly felt.
“We specifically were not looking for longer-lasting, more mature phases of the relationship. We wanted subjects who were feeling euphoric, energetic, obsessively thinking about their beloved, craving their presence,” he said.
“When passionate love is described like this, it in some ways sounds like an addiction. We thought, 'Maybe this does involve similar brain systems as those involved in addictions which are heavily dopamine-related.' Dopamine is the neurotransmitter in our brain that is intimately involved with feeling good."
The findings of the study are intriguing because the pleasure centres in the brain that were activated during the romantic-partner test are the same as those that are activated when a person takes specific drugs, for example cocaine. A co-author of the study, Jarred Younger, says that the findings are interesting because ultimately the brain responds in a similar way when a person views a picture of the person they are in love with as to when they are taking drugs.
“One of the key sites for love-induced analgesia is the nucleus accumbens, a key reward addiction center for opioids, cocaine and other drugs of abuse. The region tells the brain that you really need to keep doing this.” No wonder thinking and talking about your new partner in the early stages of a relationship seems so addictive!
The implications of this study are far reaching, not only in the field of neuroscience, but also in the field of psychology and the nature of drug addiction. The results of the tests suggest that reward centres in the brain can be activated by a naturally occurring biological method (in that the brain has reacted to a visual stimulus) with the same result as the reaction to illicit drugs that the brain experiences. Addiction to illicit drugs is a ubiquitous problem in western society and the results of the study could influence more study into different, less dangerous ways of stimulating pleasure centres in the brain.
Arthur Aron, co-author of the study, suggests to Tracie White that the findings are indicative of the way the brain responds to a pleasurable stimulus without relying on illicit drugs and reflect a move toward a relatively risk-free stimulus of the pleasure centres in the brain.
“When thinking about your beloved, there is intense activation in the reward area of the brain — the same area that lights up when you take cocaine, the same area that lights up when you win a lot of money…this tells us that you don’t have to just rely on drugs for pain relief. People are feeling intense rewards without the side effects of drugs.”
Although the results do suggest a natural process of inducing pain-relief and stimulating pleasure in the brain, Sean Mackey is not so forthcoming about the partner-test replacing traditional pain medication any time soon.
“I don't see our evoked test being used in a treatment manner. It was specifically designed to only manipulate analgesia and from the perspective of viewing images that would be considered rewarding” he says.
Ultimately we’re still a long way off from using romantic love as a medical or pharmacological cure for the blues, and anyone who has fallen in love could probably tell you they didn’t need a study to tell you falling in love feels great. But the results do help to shed light on the issue of drug addiction. As the same reward centres in the brain are stimulated by the recognition of looking at a loved-one as those that are stimulated when a person takes illicit drugs, the results could be used to further investigate how addictions to these drugs can be more efficiently managed. But the biggest problem that arises from the study- what happens to all of us who aren’t falling in love?
