NEUROSCIENCE: Feeling the Pain of Social Loss
Jaak Panksepp

Poets have long waxed lyrical about the pain of a broken heart. Now,
as Panksepp explains in his Perspective, this metaphor may reflect
real events in the mammalian brain. A new brain neuroimaging study
(Eisenberger et al.) reveals that the brain areas that are activated
during the distress caused by social exclusion are also those
activated during physical pain. Thus, we now have an explanation for
the feeling of physical pain that accompanies emotional loss-whether
that be the loss of a loved one, rejection by one's social group, or
the distress of separation experienced by young animals.

The author is at the J. P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and
Behavior, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University,
Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA, and at the Falk Center for Molecular
Therapeutics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL 60201, USA. E-mail: jpankse@...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/302/5643/237

Related articles in Science:

Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion

Naomi I. Eisenberger, Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams
Science 2003 302: 290-292. (in Reports)

Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion
Naomi I. Eisenberger,1* Matthew D. Lieberman,1 Kipling D. Williams2
A neuroimaging study examined the neural correlates of social
exclusion and tested the hypothesis that the brain bases of social
pain are similar to those of physical pain. Participants were scanned
while playing a virtual ball-tossing game in which they were
ultimately excluded. Paralleling results from physical pain studies,
the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during exclusion
than during inclusion and correlated positively with self-reported
distress. Right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) was active during
exclusion and correlated negatively with self-reported distress. ACC
changes mediated the RVPFC-distress correlation, suggesting that
RVPFC regulates the distress of social exclusion by disrupting ACC
activity.

1 Department of Psychology, Franz Hall, University of California, Los
Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1563, USA.
2 Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109,
Australia.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
neisenbe@...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5643/290