Improves mood, helps isolate from stress, promotes connection with other people… In other words, nostalgia is good for our mental health. But what about the physical?
As it turned out, homesickness or childhood homesickness slightly reduces sensitivity to physical pain. True, the analgesic effect of nostalgia has been noticed before, it’s just that until now it was not clear what its biological basis was. And researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found the answer to this question.1.
Scientists conducted an experiment involving 34 volunteers. Participants were shown images meant to evoke childhood nostalgia, as well as neutral images. At the same time, volunteers were cauterized with a special thermosensory device on their forearms and the changes in their brain activity were observed using the method of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In addition, the participants had to rate each time the level of pain they experienced when they looked at a particular image.
And what is the result? The experiment showed that while people looked at nostalgic pictures, their pain sensitivity decreased slightly. The stronger the nostalgic feelings evoked by the images, the less pain the participants experienced. This effect was especially pronounced when the degree of heating of the device was minimal. However, when the heat became very intense, the analgesic effect of nostalgia wore off.
The data obtained using fMRI showed that nostalgia induces a characteristic pattern of neural activity in the brain, in particular, the activation of the thalamus, a department that regulates, among other things, the perception of pain. The researchers suggest that it is the increased activity of neural networks associated with the thalamus that underlies the analgesic effect of nostalgia.
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