Source:
https://scmp.com/article/641474/feel-sorry-elderly-it-really-hurts-get-rid-stuff

Feel sorry for the elderly - it really hurts to get rid of stuff

It hurts to sell your stuff, and several psychologists have proven why that is so. When you sell or give away something you are attached to, a part of your brain called the insula, which shapes our experience of pain, lights up. And the more attached we are to the object, the greater the activity recorded in the insula when we are parting with it.

Psychologists led by Brian Knutson at Stanford University, California, believe we have an innate loss aversion and the team has now run experiments during which the subjects' brains are monitored by magnetic resonance imaging scanners.