Love: Potent Painkiller
A photo of one’s beloved activates the brain’s reward centers like a drug might; learning how to harness love could help relieve pain without drug-induced side effects.
“Sooner or later, love usually ends up hurting. But in its early, blissful throes, it actually lessens pain—at least of the physical kind. That’s the finding, reported Wednesday, of a study by pain scientists and a psychologist who studies love. The study, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, sprang from a meeting of minds between Arthur Aron of State University of New York at Stony Brook, a longtime researcher of the science of love, and Dr. Sean Mackey, a pain scientist at Stanford University. The two shared a hotel room while attending a neuroscience conference a few years back. Their epiphany came one evening over drinks.”
