By comparing brain images, USC psychology researcher Dornsife found significant differences in the brain processing patterns of lonely people compared to those who were not lonely.

Writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy may have had something in mind when he wrote the first sentence.”“Anna Karenina” : “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Numerous studies show that loneliness is detrimental to health and is often accompanied by a feeling of being misunderstood by others, people report. A recent report from the United States Surgeon General described loneliness as a public health crisis in response to the increase in the number of adults suffering from loneliness. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of American adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.

Loneliness is personal

While a graduate student at UCLA, Eliza Beck, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Dornsife, sought to better understand what contributed to these feelings of disconnection and lack of understanding. Beck and his team used a neuroimaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brains of 66 college freshmen who watched a series of video clips. The subjects of the videos ranged from emotional music videos to parties and sporting events, providing a variety of scenarios for analysis.

Before the scan, participants ages 18 to 21 were asked to fill out the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a survey that measures a person’s subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

According to the results of the research, scientists divided the participants into two groups: those who were lonely and those who were “not lonely” (those who did not feel lonely). They then scanned each participant’s brain using fMRI while the participant watched the video.

Comparing brain imaging data between the two groups, researchers found that lonely people exhibited different and unique brain processing patterns than those who were not lonely.

This finding is important because it shows that neural similarity, which refers to how similar the brain activity patterns of different people are, is associated with shared understanding of the world. This common understanding is necessary for establishing social bonds. Not only do people who suffer from loneliness less closely resemble the norms of social perception of the world, but each lonely person is uniquely different. This uniqueness can further contribute to feelings of isolation and lack of social connection.

“It was surprising to see single people becoming less and less alike,” Beck said. Their inability to find common ground with people who are lonely or not alone makes it even more difficult for them to form social connections.

“The Anna Karenina principle is an apt description of lonely people because they experience loneliness uniquely, not universally,” he added.

Loneliness is not the presence or absence of friends

So, do the unique processes in lonely people cause loneliness or are they a result of loneliness?

Researchers observed that people with high levels of loneliness were more likely to have unique brain responses, regardless of the number of friends or social connections they had. This raised the possibility that being around people who see the world differently than oneself may be a risk factor for loneliness, even if they interact with them regularly.

The research also suggests that changing social connections or disconnections over time can influence the extent to which a person’s perception of the world is idiosyncratic.

Going forward, Beck said he’s interested in surveying people who have friends and are socially active but still feel lonely. Researchers are also investigating which particular situations lonely people perceive differently. For example, do lonely people display idiosyncrasies when processing unexpected events or ambiguous social contexts in which events may be interpreted differently? Source