Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 15, Pages 6270-6275Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1102693108
Keywords
emotion; social pain; affective neuroscience; neuroimaging; psychological distress
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health National Institute of Mental Health [R01MH076136]
- National Institute on Drug Abuse [RC1DA028608]
- National Institutes of Health [P41 RR009784]
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How similar are the experiences of social rejection and physical pain? Extant research suggests that a network of brain regions that support the affective but not the sensory components of physical pain underlie both experiences. Here we demonstrate that when rejection is powerfully elicited-by having people who recently experienced an unwanted break-up view a photograph of their ex-partner as they think about being rejected-areas that support the sensory components of physical pain (secondary somatosensory cortex; dorsal posterior insula) become active. We demonstrate the overlap between social rejection and physical pain in these areas by comparing both conditions in the same individuals using functional MRI. We further demonstrate the specificity of the secondary somatosensory cortex and dorsal posterior insula activity to physical pain by comparing activated locations in our study with a database of over 500 published studies. Activation in these regions was highly diagnostic of physical pain, with positive predictive values up to 88%. These results give new meaning to the idea that rejection hurts. They demonstrate that rejection and physical pain are similar not only in that they are both distressing-they share a common somatosensory representation as well.
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