Have you ever split up and not felt like yourself for a while? No wonder! According to a neurological study, painful separations even change our brains.
It is clear that the pain of separation and heartache affect our emotional balance. We grieve, suffer, are hurt, often have doubts about ourselves and have to get used to life without our ex – there is a lot going on. In a study, neurologists have now examined whether separations also have a visible or measurable effect on the brain. So much in advance: Do it obviously – and not only on the part responsible for the feelings.
Pain in separation affects the brain
The participants in the study were 69 test subjects between the ages of 18 and 26. At the time of the investigation, they had all separated from their partner within the past six months or had been left. First of all, the scientists determined the degree of their separation pain or their "separation depression" – by asking them appropriate questions about their emotional state. Then the researchers performed a so-called "functional magnetic resonance imaging" (fMRI), an imaging procedure that, for example, shows blood circulation in certain brain regions and can thus provide information on neuronal activity.
It turned out: The more severe the separation-depressive symptoms of the test subjects, the more conspicuous their fMRI findings, in that limited the spatial-temporal dynamics of your brain as a whole was. That in turn means that those affected Process information poorly can, especially information from different brain regions (e.g. memories and current sensory perceptions).
Conclusion
The research confirms what many people who have experienced a loss would surely suspect: If we are sad and suffer from a separation, for example, it can affect our mental performance. Perhaps we can imagine it that our brains are too busy grieving to organize themselves spatiotemporally. In any case, the result of this study gives us another argument as to why it is perfectly okay to take care of yourself if your heart has been broken or you have experienced something painful. Grief and depression are not moods that we can simply shake off on a fun disco Fox evening. They are real wounds that unfortunately sometimes cause us painful experiences. They can only heal if we treat them appropriately and take care of them – and allow help if necessary.