People say things "make their heart ache" with longing, or that their heart is heavy when they are sad. Breakups and painful deaths cause heartache. But it's really the brain that thinks and reacts, right? How did the heart become so powerful? It's simply the muscle that pumps blood. Why are we advised to follow it when uncertain, to think and react with it? How has it become the symbol for true love? Why don't we say "follow your brain?"
Well, it's because extremely emotional things can cause physical reactions in the body. Some people get sick when they're upset or their stomach hurts when they're stressed. And so we have the term "gut-wrenching". Then there are the familiar "heart-rending" or "heart-stopping." I experience this when people I care about are in pain. My heart aches for them, literally.
So I did some research, wondering what causes this reaction in the heart, this simple bodily reaction which has coined so many of our descriptive terms. This is what I found.
"When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath. In fact, emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting the two are inextricably connected.
But how do emotions trigger physical sensations? Scientists do not know, but recently pain researchers uncovered a possible pathway from mind to body. According to a 2009 study from the University of Arizona and the University of Maryland, activity in a brain region that regulates emotional reactions called the anterior cingulate cortex helps to explain how an emotional insult can trigger a biological cascade. During a particularly stressful experience, the anterior cingulate cortex may respond by increasing the activity of the vagus nerve—the nerve that starts in the brain stem and connects to the neck, chest and abdomen. When the vagus nerve is overstimulated, it can cause pain and nausea.
Heartache is not the only way emotional and physical pain intersect in our brain. Reent studies show that even experiencing emotional pain on behalf of another person—that is, empathy—can influence our pain perception. And this empathy effect is not restricted to humans. In 2006 a paper published in Science revealed that when a mouse observes its cage mate in agony, its sensitivity to physical pain increases. And when it comes into close contact with a friendly, unharmed mouse, its sensitivity to pain diminishes.
Soon after, one of us (Coan) published a functional MRI study in humans that supported the finding in mice, showing that simple acts of social kindness, such as holding hands, can blunt the brain’s response to threats of physical pain and thus lessen the experience of pain. Coan implicated several brain regions involved in both anticipating pain and regulating negative emotions, including the right anterior insula (which helps to regulate motor control and cognitive functioning), the superior frontal gyrus (which is involved in self-awareness and sensory processing) and the hypothalamus (which links the nervous system to the endocrine system).
Although the biological pathways underlying these connections between physical and mental pain are not well understood, studies such as these are revealing how intricate the connection is and how very real the pain of heartache can be." --http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-chest-pains
and more...
"React to emotional pressure. This is related to excitement, and even stress also has a lot to do with subconscious functions of the brain concerning "love". There is good stress (like attraction) and bad stress (called distress). When you seem to have found a prospective mate, neurotransmitters are sent throughout your brain to emotionally make a good link to that person. Ever miss your boyfriend/girlfriend to the point of heartache? Chemical, nervous reactions are the cause of it. Dopamine is said to be the principle chemical involved in giving us strong urges like sexual attraction over time. Romantic love is not just an emotion--but rather, a whole motivational system with a reward drive to get you to stick with that person. While this is going on, we have a decrease in serotonin, which if elevated, leads to feelings of obsession or something like an addiction..."--http://www.wikihow.com/Understand-Love-As-a-Chemical-Reaction
So here is my first random odds and ends post. Now I better understand how such terms came to be. More people get heartaches than headaches from pain. Thus people learned to think in terms of their heart, rather than their brain.
