The science behind the broken heart
BY PRAJKTA PANHALE / JUNE 28, 2022
Heartbreak is an unfortunately common part of the human experience and it’s safe to say that we all want to avoid experiencing heartbreak.
We feel heartbroken when we lose someone or something we loved or wanted very much, like a romantic relationship or a friendship, a family member, a pet, or a job or opportunity that was very important to us.Heartbreak can cause a large amount of stress, especially if the loss is a sudden one. This stress can affect how we feel emotionally and physically, and may take weeks, months or even years to recover from.
while there is a lot to know about how and why we experience in love and heartbreak studies show that your brain registers the emotional pain of heartbreak in the same way as physical pain, which is why you might feel like your heartbreak is causing actual physical hurt. The language we use to describe heartbreak — “I feel like my heart’s been ripped out”, “it was gut wrenching”, “like a slap in the face” — all hint at the way we associate physical pain with emotional pain . there are many theories about how physical pain is associated with emotional pain .
ow do emotions trigger physical sensations? According to a 2009 study from the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland, activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions called the anterior cingulate cortex helps to explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade. During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve — (the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen.)When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea.
By Robert Emery, Jim Coan on March 1, 2010
n a study led by psychologist Art Aron, neurologist Lucy Brown, and anthropologist Helen Fisher, individuals who were deeply in love viewed images of their beloved and simultaneously had their brains scanned in an fMRI machine, which maps neural activity by measuring changes in blood flow in the brain. The fMRI’s vivid casts of yellows, greens, and blues — fireworks across gray matter — clearly showed that romantic love activates in the caudate nucleus, via a flood of dopamine. The caudate nucleus is associated with what psychologists call “motivation and goal-oriented behavior,” or “the rewards system.” To many of these experts, the fact that love fires there suggests that love isn’t so much an emotion in its own right — although aspects of it are obviously highly emotional — as it is a “goal-oriented motivational state.”
When you’re deep in the mire of heartbreak, chances are that you feel pain somewhere in your body — probably in your chest or stomach. Some people describe it as a dull ache, others as piercing, while still others experience it as a crushing sensation. The pain can last for a few seconds and then subside, or it can be chronic, hanging over your days and depleting you like just like the pain, say, of a back injury or a migraine.
But how can we reconcile the sensation of our hearts breaking — when in fact they don’t, at least not literally — with biophysical reality? What actually happens in our bodies to create that sensation? The short answer is that no one knows. The long answer is that the pain might be caused by the simultaneous hormonal triggering of the sympathetic activation system (most commonly referred to as fight-or-flight stress that ramps up heart and lung action) and the parasympathetic activation system (known as the rest-and-digest response, which slows the heart down and is tied to the social-engagement system). In effect, then, it could be as if the heart’s accelerator and brakes are pushed simultaneously, and those conflicting actions create the sensation of heartbreak.
So when you say you’re “hurt” as a result of being rejected by someone close to you, you’re not just leaning on a metaphor. As far as your brain is concerned, the pain you feel is no different from a stab wound.
BY MEGHAN LASLOCKY | FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Emotional pain can cause actual physical symptoms .Dying from a broken heart may sound like it’s from romance fiction, but heartbreak can, in fact, lead to dangerous physical symptoms. Now, science has a name for it. It’s called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, named after the Japanese word for an octopus pot. That’s the shape that the heart takes when suffering from Broken Heart Syndrome.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a weakening of the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber, usually as the result of severe emotional or physical stress, such as a sudden illness, the loss of a loved one, a serious accident, or a natural disaster such as an earthquake. That’s why the condition is also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy, or broken-heart syndrome. The main symptoms are chest pain and shortness of breath.
Back in 2010 Robert Emery and Jim Coan, professors of psychology at the University of Virginia said that vagus nerve might be the reason of heartache after heartbreak .While some studies show that conflict actions due to hormonal conflict cause heartache .However in today’s world broken heart syndrome is mostly accepted as the reason of heartache when our feelings are hurt .
References
1. Scientific american ;what causes chest pain when feelings are hurt ?,by Robert emery and Jim coan on march 1,2010
2.Greater Good Magazine ;This is your brain on heartbreak , by Meghan laslocky on Feb 15,2013
3.The Hitchcock project ;The anatomy of broken heart , by kylen yumal on Feb 10,2020
4.Harvard Health Publishing; Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy ,May 19 ,2022
