Lec 3: social pains

Social pain

Pain associated with actual or potential threats to one’s connections

Is social connection a need or a Need?

Need

Social pain overlap theory (SPOT) (Eisenberger & Lieberman 2004)

2-way mammalian attachment system ‘piggybacked’ onto physical pain system to promote survival

Ex 1: if separation from caregiver is a threat to survival, feeling hurt by separation may be an adaptive way to prevent it

Ex 2: parents feel pain when baby cries

Panksepp (1978)

• What they did: administered low doses of morphine or naloxone (an opioid) to young, socially isolated animals. They measured how these drugs altered isolation distress vocalizations and social seeking behavior.

• Findings: doses of morphine dramatically reduced separation crying w/o sedation, while blocking opioid receptors with naloxone amplified distress calls. The soothing effect of opiates effectively mimicked the calming impact of social reunion. morphine lessened social pain, meaning opioids were affecting this pain.

• What it means: established the Brain Opioid Theory of Social Attachment, demonstrating that social bonds rely on the same endogenous opioid pathways as physical pain relief. It showed that social separation triggers a state similar to opiate withdrawal, providing a neurobiological basis for social pain and attachment.

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)

• Def: region in the medial frontal lobe (Brodmann areas 24/32) that connects executive control networks with limb-motor systems. Detects cognitive conflict, calculating the expected value of mental effort, and processing the distress associated with physical and social pain. part of the affective aspect of pain.

• Evidence: Neuroimaging and EEG studies consistently demonstrate dACC activation during high-conflict tasks like the Stroop test, generating a neural error-related negativity (ERN) signal within milliseconds of a mistake. Additional single-unit and fMRI research reveals that dACC neurons track unexpected outcome errors during reinforcement learning and register social exclusion in paradigm tasks like Cyberball.

• impact of damage: impair conflict processing and prevent individuals from learning from or correcting their mistakes. Severe bilateral damage can cause akinetic mutism—a state where patients are conscious but lack the internal drive to move or speak—while localized therapeutic lesions reduce the emotional distress of chronic pain without altering tactile sensation.

Components of the pain network

dACC, S1, S2, posterior insula, anterior insula

S1 & S2 (somatosensory cortex/ touch)

• encode spatial localization, intensity, and temporal aspects of the painful stimulus

• sensory aspect of pain: detection and discrimination of painful stimulus —> its location, intensity, quality

• S1 = sensation outside body

• S2 = sensation inside body

• each spot along strip correlates to different part of the body

anterior insula

affective aspect of pain: the emotional unpleasantness and suffering that accompanies a painful stimulus

posterior insula

sensory aspect of pain

cingulotomy surgery

• removing chuck of cingulate cortex or snapping connections from cingulate cortex to other parts

• affective dimensions of pain are gone

Ploner (1999)

• what they did: investigated a single human patient who had suffered a stroke resulting in a focal lesion of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and postcentral gyrus. They applied thermal laser stimuli to the patient's affected hand to test whether the individual could perceive or locate the pain sensory signals

• findings: When stimulated, the patient was completely unable to locate the pain, describe its physical sensation, or determine its intensity. However, the patient still reported feeling a vague, unpleasant emotional reaction—describing an urge to avoid the stimulus without knowing what or where it was.

• what it means: provided direct empirical evidence in humans that the sensory-discriminative dimension of pain (location, quality, intensity) and the affective-motivational dimension (unpleasantness, emotional aversion) are processed by distinct neural pathways. It demonstrated that the primary somatosensory cortex and lateral pain system are essential for localization and sensory sensation, but the affective aspect of pain can persist independently through intact medial structures like the anterior cingulate cortex.

Lessions to ACC vs electrical stimulation of the ACC

• Lessions (Maclean & Newman): the squirrel monkeys had reduced distress vocalizations. This supports the idea that the ACC is part of the affective component of pain.

• Electrical stimulation (Smith; Robinson): Rhesus monkeys had spontaneous elicitation of distress vocalizations.

Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams (2003)

• What they did: researchers placed participants in an fMRI scanner while they played a virtual ball-tossing game called "Cyberball" with two other computer-controlled players. Participants were initially included in the game, but were later deliberately excluded as the other players stopped tossing them the ball. The study measured changes in brain activity during exclusion compared to inclusion, alongside self-reported feelings of social distress.

• Findings: Social exclusion led to significantly increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the anterior insula, regions of the brain responsible for processing the distressing component of physical pain. Furthermore, activation in the dACC directly correlated with the degree of self-reported distress participants felt upon being left out. Conversely, activity in the right ventral prefrontal cortex (rVFC) increased to help regulate and damp down this social distress.

• What it means: study provides neurobiological evidence that social rejection and physical pain share overlapping neural circuitry in the human brain. This suggests that "hurt feelings" are not merely metaphorical, as evolution adapted the physical pain system to alert humans to threats to their social bonds. Ultimately, it highlights that social connection is a fundamental human need essential for survival.

Eisenberger, Inagaki, Muscatell, Haltom & Leary (2011)

• what they did: placed participants in an fMRI scanner while giving them positive and negative evaluative trait feedback that they believed came from another person. Throughout the task, participants continually reported their real-time levels of state self-esteem in response to this feedback.

• findings: Negative social feedback activated brain regions associated with emotional distress and pain processing, specifically the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula. Stronger neural responses in these pain-processing areas directly correlated with sharper drops in participants' state self-esteem.

• what it means: results support Sociometer Theory by showing that self-esteem functions as an internal gauge that uses pain-processing neural systems to track social inclusion and rejection. Ultimately, state self-esteem serves an adaptive role by alerting individuals when their social standing or interpersonal connections are threatened.

what are the controversies of social pain?

Salience =. attention getting

• argues dACC activation during social exclusion doesn’t reflect genuine pain but rather the unexpectedness/ salience of suddenly being excluded

• surprise signal

• Kawamoto (2012): WHAT THEY DID: ball-tossing game & brain activity measured with fMRI. Afterward, they rated social pain and surprise. 50% were included, 20% excluded, 80% overinclusion. FINDINGS: social pain was higher during exclusion. Overinclusion was higher for % of people who were aware and surprised. dACC activity greater for exclusion. WHAT IT MEANS: surprise alone doesn’t explain the response to exclusion. salience critique refuted.

Conflict

• suggests when there’s conflict between ones goals & outcomes, it’s tracked so we can apply effortful top down processes to correct things

• dACC isnt about pain specifically but rather about monitoring anything that conflicts our goals

• In this case, the goal is being included in the ball-toss game

• Verbruggen (2019): WHAT THEY DID: press key that matches the arrow but if you hear a beep, cancel the press. This was to test how quickly you can stop an action you’re about to make. It measured the speed of stopping an impending response. The researchers vary the delay before beep (later beep = harder to stop). FINDINGS: the late beep (harder) had more dACC activity due to distress & conflict. dACC activity for people who failed and were frustrated & people who just failed WHAT IT MEANS: created the Neural Alarm System Hypothesis, stating the dACC functions as an internal alert mechanism by combining discrepancy detection with emotional distress to recruit attention toward solving a problem. Detects problem then. sounds the alarm which is distress to solve the problem.

DeWall, MacDonald, Eisenberger (2010)

• what they did: conducted two studies to test if an over-the-counter pain reliever could reduce emotional distress from social rejection. Participants took either daily Tylenol or a placebo for three weeks, recording their daily hurt feelings in the first experiment and undergoing fMRI brain scans during an experimental social exclusion game in the second.

• findings: Participants taking Tylenol reported significantly fewer daily hurt feelings over time than those on the placebo. Furthermore, their fMRI scans revealed reduced neural activity during social exclusion in key distress-processing regions of the brain, specifically the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula.

• what it means: demonstrate a shared neural architecture for physical and social pain, proving that emotional rejection relies on the same brain circuitry used to register physical harm. Broadly, it suggests that psychological distress can be attenuated through physical pain pathways, offering new insight into human social behavior.