After a Death, the Pain that Doesn’t Go Away

An article in the Sept. 28 New York Times about dealing with long-lasting grief cited 2008 research by Mary-Frances O'Connor, assistant professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, that found that certain types of chronic grief activate reward centers in the brain, possibly giving sorrowful memories addiction-like properties. O'Connor was quoted. The article also appeared Sept. 29 in the Seattle Post Intelligencer.