Tuesday, July 01, 2008

fMRI studies help to discover more about grief

I read this very interesting article on studies performed by clinical psychologists on 23 women who were divided into 2 groups based on their ability to handle grief. All of them had lost a loved one (mother/sister) to breast cancer and while some were able to accept it and move on, others were still in grief (state called 'complicated grief'). They were shown photos of their loved one or a stranger along with a word that was either grief-related or otherwise. The normal group, when shown the pic of their loved one, had activity in the region of the brain known to process pain. While the surprise was that the group belonging to 'complicated grief' not only had activity in those regions but also in the nucleus accumbens, the region of the brain related to pleasure. Mary-Frances O'Connor of the University of California, Los Angeles, who conducted this study, said this would help find a cure for people with this condition. Read more about it here.

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