Brain Health Across the Life Span by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Health and Medicine: Mental Health and Behavior, Health and Medicine: Health Sciences, Health and Medicine: Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2020-04-10T21:00:00+00:00

Effect of Loneliness on Physical and Mental Health

As the prevalence of loneliness rises, more evidence is accruing that loneliness is a major risk factor for poor physical and mental health outcomes (Cacioppo and Cacioppo, 2018a). For instance, the odds ratio for dying earlier from loneliness has been shown to be much higher (45 percent) than from excessive drinking (30 percent), obesity (20 percent), or air pollution (5 percent) (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). Studies in animals or humans demonstrate the effect of loneliness or lack of social connection on both physical and mental health, including the activation of the stress response, increases in inflammatory mechanisms, and increases in cell deaths in specific brain areas. A quantitative meta-analysis of functional imaging studies of social rejection found that when people feel rejected, a specific set of brain areas is activated, although this can be modulated as a function of whether the person is rejected by a stranger or a significant other. All the activated brain areas were in the specific networks involved in emotions and in expectations by relation (Cacioppo et al., 2013). When a person feels lonely, a different set of brain areas activates or deactivates in the social brain networks instead: areas that are important for empathy, compassion, perspective taking, and being in synchrony with others (Cacioppo et al., 2014).

Evidence from different types of social species may cast light on the social dimension of the human brain. For instance, the locust shifts from solitary to social within a year; it has a brain that is about 30 percent larger when it is social than when it is nonsocial (Burrows et al., 2011; Ott and Rogers, 2010; Rogers and Ott, 2015). Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of people with different social network sizes have also revealed differences in sizes in various parts of the social brain (Cacioppo et al., 2014). Cacioppo emphasized that it is not the entire brain that increases in size, only the brain areas needed for social connections. When a locust is social, it only needs to communicate with olfactory senses or with touch, so the brain areas involved in motor sensory integration are bigger or more active. But when the locust is solitary, the visual cortex has greater activation because increased visual attention is needed to detect threats at a distance. Similarly, in humans, the visual cortex is also more activated in lonely individuals (Cacioppo et al., 2014). Cacioppo surmised that these individuals may have a hypervigilance to social threat or potential danger, and thus a hyperactivation in areas of the brain that are important for perspective taking, empathizing, or connecting with others.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.