Intense and passionate feelings of love can provide pain relief similar to pain relievers or certain drugs such as cocaine, according to a Stanford University Medical Center study published in the journalPLoS ONE. According to Sean Mackey, head of the study, “when people are in themost passionate love phaseexistsignificant alterations in your mood that impact your experience of pain“.
The researchers recruited 15 university students, eight women and seven men, and asked them to bring photos of their lovers and an equally attractive acquaintance. The authors then successively exposed the images to the subjects while they heated a computer-controlled thermal stimulator placed in the palm of the hand to cause mild pain. At the same time, the brains of the participants were scanned through functional magnetic resonance imaging.
Volunteers were assessed on their levels of pain relief while being entertained with a word association task. There is evidence that distraction relieves pain, and the researchers wanted to make sure that love didn’t just function as a distraction from pain.
The results showed that both love and distraction reduced pain, both to a greater extent than when concentrating on the photo of the known attraction, but the two pain reduction methods used different brain mechanisms.
Younger notes that with the distraction test, the brain mechanisms leading to pain release were mostly cognitive. However, ?love-induced analgesia is much more associated with the reward centers of the brainand appears to involve more primitive aspects of the brain, activating deep structures that could block pain at a spinal level,similar to how opioid pain relievers work“explains the researcher, who points out that in these reward centers thedopamine, a neurotransmitter that influences mood, rewards, and motivation.
