Name: The science behind a broken heart | Chasing Life
Uploaded: 2026-02-13T17:03:19.000Z
Duration: 25 min 15 s
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We have a very timely and I think, very important episode for you today, especially given that Valentine's Day is around the corner.

But for a lot of people listening, they know it can be a painful thing as well.

And not just sort of emotional pain and not even mental pain, but

actual physical pain that sometimes accompanies love.

Sometimes it's part of what makes love so unique, so special.

But sometimes pain is just pain, and it's something that we have to deal with.

That's part of the reason I'm so excited to have Professor Yoram Yovel on the show today.

He is someone who's experienced some of the most difficult mental pain one can experience in their life.

And he dedicated his life to understanding it and treating it.

Why are we human beings evolved to feel that kind of pain?

I'd like to start with the story that you talk about in your TED Talk, and

It's a painful story, which I guess is part of what we're talking about today.

But when you were 14 years old, you lost your father.

First of all, I'm sorry, at such a young age to lose a parent.

You know, I can still remember how much it hurts.

Was it a sudden sort of thing or what happened?

Well, yet it shouldn't have been as sudden.

He got cancer at a very young age, and he was a doctor himself.

And I think, as like many doctors, he kind of denied it, didn't get checked.

And once he was diagnosed, it was really too late.

He was stage four, and he died a short time after he was diagnosed.

Like, people describe pain, they'll say, my ankle is injured, whatever.

It felt like this crushing, like something heavy on your chest.

When I think about him, I could still feel a little twinge, a little tang of it, but

I think, just do that little experiment and ask someone, you know, what's the most painful thing that ever happened in their Lives.

And I think most times they would not tell you about a vehicle accident or some surgery, but

they'll tell you about someone they loved and they lost.

The pain matrix in our brains also mediates what we call mental pain.

People have chest pain, their stomach may feel in knots, muscle pain, you know, things like that as a result of some deeply emotional experience.

What exactly is happening in their bodies?

Well, most of the action is happening in their brains.

You know, we know that you can have terrible pain in an organ that doesn't exist anymore.

You know, phantom pain is someone that's had their leg amputated 20 or 30 years ago, and

they're still suffering terrible pain in the toes that they no longer have.

I remember reading a study some time ago about loneliness and put these.

These patients in a functional MRI scanner, and

they were trying to basically look at areas of the brain that they know are responsible for physical pain and, and

see if some of those same areas were lighting up in someone who's experiencing loneliness.

So when you were experiencing something that would, I think, definitively be thought of as an emotional experience, to see the idea that the brain is lighting up in the same way.

Is that the mechanism you're talking about?

So the mechanisms, they really do overlap.

And I think really that mental pain actually serves the same function that physical pain does.

You know, acute pain alerts us to situations where there's.

And chronic pain is when that alarm system sort of works, quote, unquote, too well.

It keeps on ringing even when that doesn't serve any survival function.

I think acute mental pain is also an alarm system.

It means that we're about to lose a connection to someone we love.

Like, why did we human beings evolve to feel, as you describe it, physical pain in response to these emotional things?

We know that from the experiments of Jaak.

Panksip was a basic neurobiologist who worked with animals, and

he was the first to realize that separation anxiety serves a survival purpose.

Because then they seek out their mothers and they yell and they yelp, and

And that's essential because baby mammals can't survive on their own in the wild.

And actually, most mammals lose that capacity.

They lose that sensitivity as they grow older.

Other but social animals like dogs, wolves, primates, they don't lose it.

So we have the capacity to form intense attachments and also to feel very distressed when we're about to lose them.

And if you ask, what purpose does mental pain serve, and

I have to say it in just two words, that would be super.

It's that pain that we feel when someone's about to leave us that brings us back together.

And I think that what holds us together in couples, in families and extended families, we know that because we know what it feels like when they're gone.

You know, it's one of those questions that poets and philosophers ask, does love always hurt?

And I think, you know, the answer is yes, of course.