New brain scanning technologies are revealing that the part of the brain that processes physical pain also deals with emotional pain.
And in the same way that in some people injury can cause long-lasting chronic pain, science now reveals why some will never get over such heartbreak.
Emotional pain can take many forms; a relationship break-up or social exclusion, for example.
But it does not get any more extreme than losing a loved one, as Scottish broadcaster Mark Stephen did.
In July 1995 he was driving a tractor while hay-making and accidentally hit his young daughter. She died shortly afterwards.
Mark’s grief was overwhelming, he says. Read more…
Source: BBC;Â The Pain Of Emotion will be broadcast on Monday, 21 July, 2008 at 2100 BST on BBC Radio 4, and for seven days on BBC iPlayer.
