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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...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Cell Press
2012
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3510434 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Cell Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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