Intense romantic love can significantly reduce the perception of pain, apart from giving the love-stricken individual a feeling of well-being and euphoria, researchers report in an article published in PLoS One. When volunteers were exposed to moderate heat pain, self-reporting and neuroimaging revealed that their feelings of pain were significantly reduced when they were shown pictures of the person they were passionately in love with.

The authors say that feelings of intense, romantic love appear to block physical pain in a similar way to morphine or cocaine.

Dr Sean Mackey, from Stanford University, and team gathered 15 male and female volunteers, all students at the same university. All participants were passionately in love with somebody – an early stage of romantic love when feelings are said to me most intense. Feelings of fervent love are known to be at their most passionate and thrilling during the first nine months of a new, romantic relationship.

The researchers placed a computer-controlled probe on the palm of their hands and delivered thermal pain – painful heat – while simultaneously using an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scan of their brains.

They found that feelings of intense or passionate love, caused by seeing a photograph of the person they loved, acted as a potent painkiller.

To determine whether other factors were involved, such as sexual attraction, the students were also shown photographs of attractive people they knew – the analgesic effect was not there; it did not reduce their sensation of pain.

The scientists explain that the imaging scans showed that the effects of intense love were very similar to those of cocaine or morphine in the brain’s reward centers.

Dr. Mackey said:

When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain.

We’re beginning to tease apart some of these reward systems in the brain and how they influence pain. These are very deep, old systems in our brain that involve dopamine – a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation.

The participants had to complete three tasks while they were exposed to thermal pain:

  • See pictures of their beloved. This significantly reduced pain and was seen to activate the brain’s reward system. fMRI showed increased activity in the caudate head, nucleus accumbens, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – these are all reward-processing regions of the brain, and not linked to distraction-induced analgesia.
  • See pictures of an attractive acquaintance. This made no difference to pain.
  • Carry out a word-associated distraction task known to reduce pain. This did reduce pain, but was not associated with activation of the brain’s reward system – it is a distraction-induced analgesia.

The authors wrote:

The results suggest that the activation of neural reward systems via non-pharmacologic means can reduce the experience of pain.

Perhaps the song “Love Hurts”, written and composed by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant and first sung by The Everly Brothers and then in 1975 by the rock band Nazareth, should be reworded.

Source: Stanford University, PLoS One

“Viewing Pictures of a Romantic Partner Reduces Experimental Pain: Involvement of Neural Reward Systems”
Jarred Younger, Arthur Aron, Sara Parke, Neil Chatterjee, Sean Mackey
PLoS ONE 5(10): e13309. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013309

Written by Christian Nordqvist