Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

WASHINGTON (AP) -- To a part of the brain that registers pain, the distressful reaction from social rejection is just as great as from a poke in the eye, according to researchers who measured the neural reactions of people who thought they had become outcasts in a game.

In an experiment at UCLA, researchers monitored the blood flow in the brains of people who had been led to believe that other players in a computer ball game were intentionally excluding them and refusing to let them play with the group.

  cnn