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Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception

Loneliness is the distressing feeling associated with the perceived absence of satisfying social relationships [1]. Loneliness is increasingly prevalent in modern societies [2, 3] and has detrimental effects on health and happiness [4, 5]. Although situational threats to social relationships can tra...

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Autores principales: Kanai, Ryota, Bahrami, Bahador, Duchaine, Brad, Janik, Agnieszka, Banissy, Michael J., Rees, Geraint
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cell Press 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23041193
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.045
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author Kanai, Ryota
Bahrami, Bahador
Duchaine, Brad
Janik, Agnieszka
Banissy, Michael J.
Rees, Geraint
author_facet Kanai, Ryota
Bahrami, Bahador
Duchaine, Brad
Janik, Agnieszka
Banissy, Michael J.
Rees, Geraint
author_sort Kanai, Ryota
collection PubMed
description Loneliness is the distressing feeling associated with the perceived absence of satisfying social relationships [1]. Loneliness is increasingly prevalent in modern societies [2, 3] and has detrimental effects on health and happiness [4, 5]. Although situational threats to social relationships can transiently induce the emotion of loneliness, susceptibility to loneliness is a stable trait that varies across individuals [6–8] and is to some extent heritable [9–11]. However, little is known about the neural processes associated with loneliness (but see [12–14]). Here, we hypothesized that individual differences in loneliness might be reflected in the structure of the brain regions associated with social processes [15]. To test this hypothesis, we used voxel-based morphometry and showed that lonely individuals have less gray matter in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS)—an area implicated in basic social perception. As this finding predicted, we further confirmed that loneliness was associated with difficulty in processing social cues. Although other sociopsychological factors such as social network size, anxiety, and empathy independently contributed to loneliness, only basic social perception skills mediated the association between the pSTS volume and loneliness. Taken together, our results suggest that basic social perceptual abilities play an important role in shaping an individual’s loneliness.
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spelling pubmed-35104342012-12-05 Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception Kanai, Ryota Bahrami, Bahador Duchaine, Brad Janik, Agnieszka Banissy, Michael J. Rees, Geraint Curr Biol Report Loneliness is the distressing feeling associated with the perceived absence of satisfying social relationships [1]. Loneliness is increasingly prevalent in modern societies [2, 3] and has detrimental effects on health and happiness [4, 5]. Although situational threats to social relationships can transiently induce the emotion of loneliness, susceptibility to loneliness is a stable trait that varies across individuals [6–8] and is to some extent heritable [9–11]. However, little is known about the neural processes associated with loneliness (but see [12–14]). Here, we hypothesized that individual differences in loneliness might be reflected in the structure of the brain regions associated with social processes [15]. To test this hypothesis, we used voxel-based morphometry and showed that lonely individuals have less gray matter in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS)—an area implicated in basic social perception. As this finding predicted, we further confirmed that loneliness was associated with difficulty in processing social cues. Although other sociopsychological factors such as social network size, anxiety, and empathy independently contributed to loneliness, only basic social perception skills mediated the association between the pSTS volume and loneliness. Taken together, our results suggest that basic social perceptual abilities play an important role in shaping an individual’s loneliness. Cell Press 2012-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3510434/ /pubmed/23041193 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.045 Text en © 2012 ELL & Excerpta Medica. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Open Access under CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) license
spellingShingle Report
Kanai, Ryota
Bahrami, Bahador
Duchaine, Brad
Janik, Agnieszka
Banissy, Michael J.
Rees, Geraint
Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
title Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
title_full Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
title_fullStr Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
title_full_unstemmed Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
title_short Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
title_sort brain structure links loneliness to social perception
topic Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23041193
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.045
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