FRIDAY, Feb. 24, 2012 —Tennyson wrote, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." But if you've ever experienced the agony of romantic rejection — and most people do at some point in their lives — you may not agree with the poet.

But the emotional pain we think of as a broken heart isn't just a metaphor. Experts are finding that the pain associated with lost love and other types of social rejection has a strong connection with the ouches and aches of a pulled muscle or a stubbed toe.

Naomi Eisenberger, PhD, a researcher at the University of California-Los Angeles, realized there might be a connection between heartbreak and physical pain when she and a colleague were reviewing brain activity images from people who had experienced one or the other. "We were sitting next to each other and noticed how similar the two brain images looked," she said in a written statement. In a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, Dr. Eisenberger reviews the research on this connection.

As it turns out, some aspects of physical pain are processed by the same region that handles the pain of heartbreak. In one 2011 study, volunteers who had recently been dumped were hooked up to MRI scanners and asked to view a picture of their ex while they thought about being rejected. They then underwent thermal stimulation designed to simulate the experience of spilling hot coffee on their arms. Researchers found that when the study participants brooded about lost love, similar brain responses were evoked as when they were in physical pain. And according to other research, if you're very sensitive to physical pain, you may also feel social rejection more deeply.

So does this mean you can pop an aspirin and ease your heartache? Another study did find that people who took Tylenol (acetaminophen) for three weeks, then participated in a video game where other players ignored them, reported less hurt and fewer feelings of rejection compared with those who took placebo. But Eisenberger doesn't recommend using painkillers to protect your feelings. “I think [rejection] is probably there for a reason — to keep us connected to others,” she says.

Besides, without those intense feelings of love and loss, what would inspire poets, playwrights, songwriters, and other artists to create their masterpieces?