Rejection May Hurt More Than Feelings

[charityfundraiser]

Rejection May Hurt More Than Feelings
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/fashion/is-rejection-painful-actually-it-is-studied.html

THE GIST Being socially rejected doesnt just feel bad. It hurts.

THE SOURCE Social Rejection Shares Somatosensory Representations With Physical Pain, by Ethan F. Kross, Marc G. Berman, Walter Mischel, Edward E. Smith and Tor D. Wager; published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

[Esther12]

The more I read about psychology, and what sort of behaviour and situations are damaging for people, the more convinced I am that the psychosocial approach to CFS has been psychologically damaging for those diagnosed with CFS, and created a social setting ideal for inducing psychological problems (at least in the UK). I think that things are now improving, but there seems to be no sense of shame or responsibility for past problems... which is very psychologically unhelpful for the victims!

 

[Snow Leopard]

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/15/6270.full.pdf+html
It does seem interesting that the areas associated with emotional responses to somatosensory triggers would also be triggered by severe distress of this kind.

From reading Wikipedia, it is interesting to note that apparently Einstein did not have the parietal operculum section of the brain, (includes the S2 region). I'm pretty sure Einstein still had emotional responses to pain...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10382713
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/courses/1010/mangels/Einstein.pdf
Note, the Secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), is the region which relates to the Kross et al. study. The other regions, such as the operculo-insular region have already been implicated in the emotional response to sensory input.

The authors also noted:

Research on empathy for pain indicates, for example, that under some circumstances the S2 becomes activated when individuals observe other people in physical pain

They also note:

Before concluding, it is important to acknowledge that all of the participants in this study were trained on the Social Rejection and Physical Pain task before scanning and knew that they would be engaging in both tasks during the fMRI scan. Thus, it is possible that participants were primed to think about receiving physical pain on Social Rejection trials, which may have in turn played some role in accounting for the social rejection-related somatosensory activations that we observed.

 

[charityfundraiser]

I wonder what is meant by sharing somatosensory representation, since when people feel social rejection, I think most do not feel physical pain at the same time. So what exactly is the shared representation?

Also, although the psychiatrists and doctors mainly look at mind -> body, if there's a shared representation, then it could also go the other way. Physical pain might make people feel more social rejection than they would otherwise.

Like this other thread/study was saying:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/show...ion-linked-to-Gastric-Irritiation-in-Neonates

 

[Enid]

But everybody goes through little "rejections" - it's part of growing up and learning. Can't imagine the whole population is permantly scarred/damaged/hurt in whatever part of the brain emotions arise. Can't understand the "shared representation" like charityfundraiser too.

 

[Snow Leopard]

So what exactly is the shared representation?

There isn't any evidence of activity in the primary somatosensory regions, but only those secondary regions associated with the emotional responses to pain, according to this study. Interestingly, the authors cited a previous study where the secondary region was activated when observing others receive physical pain, presumably though empathy.

 

[Enid]

So no more than pathways really being mapped here Snow Leopard ? Presumably should add to understanding of some functional pathways for Neurology - not Psyches with their wild presumptions.