The results? Seeing images of their loved ones reduced severe pain by 12 percent and moderate pain by 45 percent in the love-sick students, according to published reports.

”We specifically were not looking for longer-lasting, more mature phases of the relationship,’’ Sean Mackey, the paper’s co-author, told the Guardian. “We wanted subjects who were feeling euphoric, energetic, obsessively thinking about their beloved, craving their presence." Apparently, they found them.

The study's results are similar to those found in a UCLA study published in the November 2009 issue of Psychological Science.

The Stanford study also concluded that distractions provided by mental tasks also reduce pain while activating different parts of the brain than does love.