Bad break-ups generate the same neuronal activity as addictions
Love is a complicated issue, and although many find it hard to believe, not only the heart is responsible for these strong feelings. Now, a new study has revealed that when a person in love is abandoned or rejected by their lover, the same mechanism which is responsible for drug addiction is activated in the brain.
When the person who left the other is not around, at least according to researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, their image and memory functions like a kind of drug. In reaching this conclusion, they studied the brain activity of 15 people who had been broken up with and were still hurting. The results were pretty simple: When looking at photos of their exes, the same neural mechanism was triggered as is generally triggered in cocaine addicts.
The study consisted of studying 15 people who were still deeply in love with those who had left. They looked at photograph of former partners and the researchers determined that the activity that occurred in their brains with an MRI.
When they looked at their exes, there was more activity in the nucleus accumbens, which according to other studies, is where activity is generated when addicts to cocaine consume their drug of choice.
In the study, published in the journal called Journal of Neurophysiology, explained that the previous findings reveal that being rejected in love generates the same neural mechanism which exists in various addictions. If you are having a tough time because your partner left you, your best bet is to rent apartments in Florence and visit some of the best museums in Europe to completely forget about this rough patch.
