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.
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“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.”
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