Brain Releases Opiod Painkillers During Social Rejection Too
Monday, October 14, 2013 - 09:10
in Health & Medicine
The brain may have its own way of easing social pain, according to a recent paper, and it involves the brain's natural painkiller system. Combining brain scans with questionnaire results, they determined that people who score high on a personality trait called resilience – the ability to adjust to environmental change – had the highest amount of natural painkiller activation. The team focused on the mu-opioid receptor system in the brain – the same system that the team has studied for years in relation to response to physical pain. Over more than a decade, U-M work has shown that when a person feels physical pain, their brains release chemicals called opioids into the space between neurons, dampening pain signals. read more