Researchers from UCL have found that
lonely people have less grey matter in a part of the brain
associated with decoding eye gaze and other social cues.
Published in the journal of Current
Biology, the study also suggests that through training people might
be able to improve their social perception and become less lonely.
“What we’ve found is the neurobiological
basis for loneliness,” said lead author Dr Ryota Kanai (UCL
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience). “Before conducting the
research we might have expected to find a link between lonely people
and the part of the brain related to emotions and anxiety, but
instead we found a link between loneliness and the amount of grey
matter in the part of the brain involved in basic social
perception.”
To see how differences in loneliness
might be reflected in the structure of the brain regions associated
with social processes, the team scanned the brains of 108 healthy
adults and gave them a number of different tests. Loneliness was
self-reported and measured using a UCLA loneliness scale
questionnaire.
When looking at full brain scans they
saw that lonely individuals have less greymatter in the left
posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS)—an area implicated in
basic social perception, confirming that loneliness was associated
with difficulty in processing social cues.
“The pSTS plays a really important role
in social perception, as it’s the initial step of understanding
other people,” said Dr Kanai. “Therefore the fact that lonely people
have less grey matter in their pSTS is likely to be the reason why
they have poorer perception skills.”
In order to gauge social perception,
participants were presented with three different faces on a screen
and asked to judge which face had misaligned eyes and whether they
were looking either right or left. Lonely people found it much
harder to identify which way the eyes were looking, confirming the
link between loneliness, the size of the pSTS and the perception of
eye gaze.
“From the study we can’t tell if
loneliness is something hardwired or environmental,” said co-author
Dr Bahador Bahrami (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience). “But
one possibility is that people who are poor at reading social cues
may experience difficulty in developing social relationships,
leading to social isolation and loneliness.”
One way to counter this loneliness could
be through social perception training with a smartphone app.
“The idea of training is one way to
address this issue, as by maybe using a smartphone app to improve
people’s basic social perception such as eye gaze, hopefully we can
help them to lead less lonely lives,” said Dr Kanai.
For more information
Brain Structure Links Loneliness to Social Perception
University College
London
(MDN) | 
