A recent study by pain scientists and a psychologist on the subject of love confirms that it actually deadens physical pain in its early stages. The study, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, was conducted by Arthur Aron of State University of New York at, a longtime researcher of the science of love, and Dr. Sean Mackey, a pain scientist at Stanford University.
Earlier studies had already shown that love lessened pain but they wanted to go one step ahead and map what was happening in the brain when this happened. They asked for couples in the first nine months of their relationships in Stanford University to participate in the study.
The study was conducted on 15 subjects who were asked to bring snaps of their beloved and of a fairly attractive person they knew. The team then heated the left palm of the subjects till they experienced moderate or severe pain, at which point they looked at the photo of their beloved and the attractive acquaintance. Another round of experiment was done with the subjects being given mental tasks at the point of pain. It was found that the snap of the beloved and the mental distraction tasks relieved pain by approximately the same amount while the acquaintance’s snap had no effect on the relief of pain.
The researchers then repeated the experiment while scanning the brains of the subjects using a functional MRI. The MRI revealed that different parts of the brain were functioning in pain relief in both tasks. The distraction task had activated higher centers of the brain responsible for thinking. The photo had activated more primitive part of the brain. This part of the brain is responsible for cravings and urges.
So, it remains to be seen if the power of love can be harnessed to control pain without drugs. It could also probably be used to also control urges such as smoking.
