Jul 11, 2023 20:00:00

Research results that lonely people differ not only from those who are not lonely but also from other lonely people in ``how to feel the world''

The Russian writer

Leo Tolstoy wrote at the beginning of his book Anna Karenina , 'All happy families look alike, but each unhappy family has its own unhappiness.' bottom. A new study measuring the brain activity of people who feel 'lonely' shows that, as Tolstoy noted, the brain activity of lonely people is not limited to those who do not feel lonely, but also to those who feel lonely. It turns out that people are different.

Lonely Individuals Process the World in Idiosyncratic Ways - Elisa C. Baek, Ryan Hyon, Karina López, Meng Du, Mason A. Porter, Carolyn Parkinson, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221145316

Brain scans reveal that lonely people process the world in unique ways
https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/brain-scans-lonely-people-process-unique/

Lonely People's Brains Work Differently, New Evidence Shows : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/lonely-peoples-brains-work-differently-new-evidence-shows

'Loneliness' is painful for human beings who are social animals, and past research has shown that loneliness is harmful not only to the mind but also to the body . Lonely people often have the feeling that they are not understood by others, and knowing what separates lonely people from those who are not is important in the prevention and treatment of loneliness.

Therefore, the research team led by Eliza Beck , a former postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at the time of the research and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California at the time of writing, selected 66 first-year college students aged 18 to 21 as subjects. We conducted an experiment with

First, 66 subjects responded to the

UCLA Loneliness Scale questionnaire, which measures the degree of loneliness and social isolation (PDF file) . Based on the results of this questionnaire, the research team classified the subjects into a 'lonely group' and a 'non-lonely group'. After that, while measuring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) , the subjects were asked to watch 14 video clips, including ``sentimental music videos,'' ``party scenes,'' and ``sports events.'' matter.

The research team analyzed how 214 different regions in the subject's brain responded to video stimuli, and what similarities and differences existed between subjects. They found that all non-lonely subjects displayed neurologically similar brain activity, whereas lonely subjects displayed distinct brain activity, regardless of the number of friends or social ties they actually had. The research team said that there was a tendency to show

Brain activity in solitary subjects showed marked differences, particularly in the default mode network , which is associated with shared viewpoints and subjective understanding, and also in areas of the brain involved in the reward system. . Furthermore, it was found that the brain activity of lonely subjects was different from that of other solitary subjects, and that loneliness did not show similar brain activity.

The low similarity of brain activity patterns in the default mode network suggests that lonely people understand the world differently than others. The inability to form a shared understanding of the world may be why lonely people struggle to establish social connections and feel isolated.

“I was surprised that lonely people were not similar to each other,” Beck said. , because they experience loneliness in a peculiar way,' he commented.