Images Show a Snub Really Is Like a Kick in the Gut

PRE-READING ACTIVITIES

Brainstorming
A. Work together as a group. Make up a list of five or six human emotions experienced regularly. What feelings do they excite?

Fill in the following chart.

Emotions
Feelings

B. Now write down five or six sentences which explain your Chart. The first one has been done for you.
1. Happiness: When I am happy, I feel as if I could fly.
2. ___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
4. ___________________________________________________________________
5. ___________________________________________________________________
6. ___________________________________________________________________

READING ACTIVITIES PART 1
A. Scanning
Now scan Part 1 of today’s article and answer the questions below as quickly as you can.
1. Is it an article about stomach infections?
2. Who is Matt Lieberman?
3. Did he publish an article about his research?
4. What is meant by “physical metaphors”?
5. How many people conducted the research?
6. Which method was used in the research?
7. How does the word “scan” used in Part 1 differ from the word “scan” when used in this task?

Part 1
WASHINGTON, Thursday October 9 (Reuters) – The feeling is familiar to anyone who has been passed over in picking teams or snubbed at a party – a sickening, almost painful feeling in the stomach.
Well, it turns out that “kicked in the gut” feeling is real, U.S. scientists said on Thursday.
Brain imaging studies show that a social snub affects the brain precisely the way visceral pain does.
“When someone hurts your feelings, it really hurts you,” said Matt Lieberman, a social psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked on the study.
“I wouldn’t want to be quoted as saying that physical pain and social pain are the same thing, but it seems that some of the same things are going on,” he said in a telephone interview.
“In the English language we use physical metaphors to describe social pain like ‘a broken heart’ and ‘hurt feelings,”’ added Naomi Eisenberger, a graduate student who did much of the work. “Now we see that there is good reason for this.”
Working with Kipling Williams, a psychology professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, Lieberman and Eisenberger set up a brain imaging test of 13 volunteers to find out how social distress affects the brain.
They used functional magnetic imaging – a type of scan that allows the brain’s activity to be viewed “live”. The 13 volunteers were given a task that they did not know related to an experiment in social snubbing… (continued)

By Maggie Fox,
Health and Science Correspondent

GLOSSARY:
imaging n. a technical process in which pictures of the inside of someone’s body are produced
visceral adj. referring to the large inside organs of a body, e.g. heart, lungs, etc.

B. Language
In academic style, a lot of participles are often used.
Participle 1 which ends in -ing can be used as an adjective, a noun and a verb in a continuous tense.
Participle 2 which ends in -ed (3rd form of a verb) can be used as an adjective, and a verb in the past and perfect tenses, as well as in the passive.
Both Participle 1 and Participle 2 are used to shorten a relative clause.
Now look through Part 1 again, and find all the examples of words ending in -ing and -ed. Try to separate them into the following groups:

-ing form

Noun

Adjective

Relative clause

Continuous Tenses

 -ed form

Adjective

Past Tenses

Passive Voice

 C. Part 2
Read Part 2 of today’s article and write out the three types of pain mentioned.
You may write them down here:
1. ___________________________________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________________________________
What other expressions with the word pain are used?

Part 2 (continued)
Writing in the journal Science, Lieberman and Eisenberger said the brains of the volunteers lit up when they were rejected in virtually the same way as a person experiencing physical pain.
“It would be odd if social pain looked like the exact same thing as someone-breaking-your-arm pain,” Lieberman said. “What it does look like is visceral pain.”
In other words – like being punched in the stomach.
The area affected is the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain known to be involved in the emotional response to pain.
In the experiment, the volunteers were asked to play a computer game. They believed they were playing with two other people, but in fact played with a set computer program.
“It looked like a ball being thrown around between the three people,” Lieberman said.
Eventually, the game excludes the player. “For the next 45 throws they don’t get thrown the ball,” Lieberman said.
“It is just heartbreaking to watch. They keep indicating that they are ready to be thrown to. This really affects the person afterwards. They report feeling social distress.”
The functional magnetic imaging verifies the physical basis of this feeling.

Social interaction is important to survival, so it would make sense that people would evolve to have a strong emotional response to being included socially, Lieberman said.
“For any mammal, all the needs that people typically think of as necessary for survival – food, shelter, avoiding physical harm – your caregiver gives you access to those needs,” Lieberman said.
But there also seems to be a defense mechanism to prevent the pain of rejection from becoming overwhelming.
“We also saw this area in the prefrontal cortex. The more it is active in response to pain, the less subjective pain you feel,” Lieberman said. “This part of the brain inhibits the more basic response.”
In the volunteers, those who had the most activity here reported the least distress in response to the snub.
It seemed to be involved in consciously thinking about the pain, Lieberman said, but said the area needed more study.

GLOSSARY:
anterior adj. situated towards the front
cingulated adj. having a girdle, or something that goes round a thing
cortex n. the outer layer of the brain

D. Language
Now finish up the lists you made for Part 1, adding the -ing and -ed forms into the appropriate categories where possible.

-ing form

Noun

Adjective

Relative clause

Continuous Tenses

 -ed form

Adjective

Past Tenses

Passive Voice

E. Irregular Verbs: Revision
Look at this sentence from Part 2 again:
Writing in the journal Science, Lieberman and Eisenberger said the brains of the volunteers lit up when they were rejected in virtually the same way as a person experiencing physical pain.
What is the first form of the verb lit used in this sentence?

Write out the third form of irregular verbs you come across in both Part 1 and Part 2.
You should get a list of six verbs total, some of them used more than once.
Choose any two verbs from your list. Write your own sentences with the chosen words, using them as
1. Adjective: ___________________________________________________________________
2. Part of a past tense form: ___________________________________________________________________
3. Part of a passive form: ___________________________________________________________________

POST-READING ACTIVITIES
A. Writing
Write an essay about your own experience, when you felt a very strong emotion due to some unexpected happening. Try to describe your physical reactions as well as emotions.
Alternately, you could write about a person you know, or about an episode in a film or a book.

B. Extension. Web Research
The 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Paul Lauterbur (USA) and Peter Mansfield (UK) for their research in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).
Search the Web for more data about the researchers, and about the development of MRI. Prepare your own short reports for the class.

Teacher’s Notes and Answers:
General Note. The subject of this lesson contains adult themes. Your students have to be really advanced to understand the article, and to be able to discuss it.
Various Language and Grammar tasks also presuppose a good knowledge of English. They are all written as Revision Tasks, but if you notice that your students have forgotten something, you may quickly remind them about some of the grammar topics, like Participles, The Gerund, Irregular Verbs.

Answer Key
PRE-READING ACTIVITIES
Brainstorming
Suggested list for the Chart.

Emotions	anger	grief	love	fear	anticipation
Feelings	violent	sad	warm	cold	tense

 READING ACTIVITIES
A. Scanning
1. No.
2. A social psychologist.
3. In Part 1, they only tell us he gave a telephone interview.
4. Metaphors connected to parts of the body.
5. Three: Matt Lieberman, Kipling Williams, Naomi Eisenberger.
6. Functional magnetic imaging.
7. Researchers scan a human brain with a special device.
Students scan an article with their eyes.

B. Language. Part 1
If needed, you may remind your students about the various forms and uses of participles, and also give them some exercises from a Grammar book.

-ing form

Noun	Adjective	Relative clause	Continuous Tenses
feeling	sickening	working	–
picking	saying
imaging
snubbing

 -ed form

Adjective	Past Tenses	Passive Voice
kicked	said	passed over
broken	worked	snubbed
hurt	added	quoted
	did	given
	set up	viewed

C. Part 2
Answer: the three types of pain mentioned in Part 2 are physical pain, social pain and visceral pain.
Other expressions with the word pain are:
someone-breaking-your-arm pain;
response to pain;
pain of rejection;
subjective pain;
thinking about the pain.

D. Language. Part 2
Suggested lists

-ing form

Noun	Adjective	Relative clause	Continuous Tenses
feeling	heartbreaking	writing	–
avoiding	overwhelming	experiencing
thinking

-ed form

Adjective	Past Tenses	Passive Voice
affected	said	rejected
known	believed	involved
thrown	looked	included
included		punched

E. Irregular Verbs
Lit is one of the most difficult irregular verbs, even quite advanced students do not always recognize it as the third form of the verb light.
The other irregular verbs are: broken, hurt, set (up), given, thrown (used several times).

POST-READING ACTIVITIES
A. Writing
Though not a very popular task, writing an essay should not be too difficult for your advanced students.
You may set a time limit, or define the number of words to be used, e.g. 200 words, or just use it as homework.

B. Web Research
Suggest that your students use a search engine, or find some useful sites before the actual lesson, and have their URLs handy. You may wish to go by
Personality: Peter Mansfield; Paul Lauterbur
Subject: MRI (magnetic resonance imaging); Nobel Prize