Emotional Pain

This is something we all knew anyway, but there is some research which supports what we have always believed.

Which is that the wounds caused by the tongue don't heal so well as the wounds caused by fire.

Researcher Zhansheng Chen, from Purdue University in Indiana, who did the research puts it most memorably: it is much harder to "re-live" physical pain than to recall social pain. She means that the memory of emotional pain is more alive and throbbing, than the memory of a physical pain.

If you are interested in how the brain works, she adds, may be it is because of the evolution of our cerebral cortex: "It certainly improved the ability of human beings to create and adapt, to function in and with groups, communities and cultures, and to respond to pain associated with social interactions. However, the cerebral cortex may also have had an unintended effect of allowing humans to relive, re-experience and suffer from social pain."

You can go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7587780.stm, and read all about it, of course.