During stressful moments, such as during a fight or a romantic brake up, it is proposed that the prefrontal cortex is taken offline to allow autonomic processes to regulate behavior. In modern society, however, inhibition, delayed response, and cognitive flexibility are vital for successful adjustment and self-regulation, and prolonged prefrontal inactivity can lead to hypervigilance and defensiveness. Prefrontal dysregulation, cognitive fog, and a lack of heart-brain coherence may even contribute to the development and sustainment of health conditions such as clinical pain.
A study published by Dr. Jarred Younger and others in The Journal of Pain, titled “The Analgesic Effects of Romantic Love,” investigated how the beginning stages of romantic love are associated with dopaminergic-reward-system activity in the human brain. Previous studies have shown how activation of this reward system can produce pain reduction. During periods of moderate and high acute thermal pain, 15 men and women completed two tasks: one known to produce feelings of love and the other a distraction task.
The researchers showed that both the love task and the distraction task significantly reduced self-reported pain as compared to a baseline control task. Even though pain reduction was comparable in the love and distraction tasks, only the love task was associated with reward system activation and descending analgesic activation. In particular, the love task was superior over the distraction task in attenuating the neural processing of pain, including sensory, affective, and cognitive pain regions.
HRV and respiratory sinus arrhythmia associated with the experience of positive emotions, such as appreciation and love, are more coherent — organized as a stable pattern of repeating sine waves than those generated during a negative emotional experience such as frustration. HRV coherence can also increase by practicing particular types of meditation and relaxation techniques as shown in the following three studies.
A study by Drs. Paul Lehrer, Yuji Sasaki, and Yoshihiro Saito, titled “Zazen and Cardiac Variability” in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, found that more experienced Zen monks tended to have more coherent heart rhythms during rest while the monks who had practiced meditation for less than two years did not.
Another study published by Dr. Jongwha Kim and others, titled “Dynamic Correlation between Heart and Brain Rhythm During Autogenic Meditation,” in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience investigating the effects of pain-reduction relaxation techniques showed that cardiac coherence can be strongly correlated with EEG alpha activity.
Dr. Ruth Stanley of the Central Minnesota Heart Center at St. Cloud Hospital published a study, titled “Types of Prayer, Heart Rate Variability, and Innate Healing,” that investigated the differential effects of five different types of prayer — supplication, devotion, intercession, gratefulness, and contemplative prayer — on HRV and cardiac coherence. It was found that all types of prayer under investigation elicited increased cardiac coherence, however, prayers of gratefulness and heart-felt love resulted in significantly higher coherence levels.
As a clinical researcher with a specialization in developing mind-body treatments for patients suffering from fibromyalgia, I believe that this groundbreaking work in psychophysiological coherence may offer the field of pain management and research with new perspectives necessary for effective care. Exploring safe and noninvasive ways of how we may utilize this intimate relationship between the brain and the heart to treat conditions such as pain and depression can provide patients with new opportunities on how to navigate their life in the face of illness.
I believe that compassionate care and finding out how patients understand love and the role it plays in their well-being is crucial for building integrative heart-brain treatment designs.
This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s print edition.
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- On The Threshold: An Interview with Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg
- This Is Your Brain … On Love
