Singer: “Love Hurts.”
That ’80s power ballad had it all wrong. Love may keep you from hurting.
Two researchers—pain specialist Sean Mackey at Stanford and love specialist Arthur Aron at S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook—met at a neuroscience conference. They realized they were talking about the same brain region.
So back at Stanford, researchers recruited 15 undergrads in the early euphoric throes of a relationship. The volunteers had photos of the romantic partner and of an attractive acquaintance. As they looked at the photos, their palms were safely heated to mild pain. Then the volunteers repeated the experiment but were distracted by tasks such as:
