It's All in the Brain

Okay, this has to be the most confusing story ever. It's a Reuter's piece on mapping emotional responses in the brain - that part is clear. The study reveals the breakthrough fact that feeling very sad after the end of a romantic relationship is a lot like being clinically depressed. They both, "showed greater decreases in brain activity in brain regions associated with emotion, motivation and attention ... factors that go awry in depression and now, it appears grief as well." Yeah. You've got to be a genius to know that heartache is heartache. I suppose I should be grateful that they are talking about the role of human emotions in depression at all ...

Breakups Can Be Mapped in the Brain
By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who are distraught after breaking up with a romantic partner show brain changes that are not seen in women less upset by a romantic rift, researchers report.

Specifically, women who said they were particularly upset about the breakup showed greater decreases in brain activity in brain regions associated with emotion, motivation and attention while thinking sad thoughts about their former partners.

Emotion, motivation and attention are "all factors that go awry in depression and now, it appears grief as well," Dr. Jeffrey P. Lorberbaum told Reuters Health.

"We speculate that brain regions involved in emotion, motivation and attention regions are impaired with severe grief," said Lorberbaum, at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

These findings may provide clues to how the brain processes extreme sadness, and how that sadness can sometimes lead to depression, he added. "If we can first understand the brain basis of grief then we eventually might be able to help those who are disabled by grief, as well as understand how depression gets triggered."