How the brain processes emotional stimuli in relation to loneliness and wisdom

Loneliness and wisdom have opposing impacts on health and well-being, but their neurocognitive bases have never been studied simultaneously.

In a recent study, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine examined how the brain processes emotional stimuli in relation to loneliness and wisdom.

In this study of 147 healthy human subjects sampled throughout adulthood, they simultaneously investigated the cognitive and neural correlates of loneliness and wisdom in the context of an emotional bias task. Aligned with the framework of the social threat of loneliness, found that loneliness was associated with reduced processing speed when angry emotional stimuli were presented to distort cognition.

Previous studies have found that overall health can depend on loneliness.

These feelings can increase your risk for a myriad of illnesses that affect both physical and mental health. Besides, The study authors note that the risk of mortality increases as loneliness increases.

“We were interested in how loneliness and wisdom relate to emotional prejudices, that is, how we react to different positive and negative emotions,” explained scholar Jyoti Mishra, lead author. of the study, director of NEATLabs and assistant professor in the department of. Psychiatry of the entity that conducted the investigation.

For the study, volunteers aged 18 to 85 were selected, who performed a simple cognitive test, showing the direction of an arrow while the background revealed different emotional faces.

“We found that when angry faces were presented as annoying, they significantly slowed down simple cognitive responses in more lonely individuals. This meant that more lonely people paid more attention to threatening stimuli, such as angry faces. – revealed the specialist -. For wisdom, on the other hand, we found a significant positive relationship for response speed when faces with happy emotions were shown, especially individuals who exhibited wiser traits, such as empathy, had more responses. fast in the presence of happy stimuli.”.

Various paths of thought

Scientists have found that the brain reacts differently when a subject is alone. Using an electroencephalogram (EEG), the team found a difference in the temporoparietal junction in people who reported being more lonely. This area deals with cognitive theory and feelings of empathy towards others. In more lonely people, the results show that the PDT was more active when angry faces appeared. However, in wiser individuals he was most active when happy faces appeared.

The EEG also revealed greater activity in the left upper parietal cortex of the more lonely participants. This region has the function of directing attention. In contrast, the region of the brain that controls empathic feelings (the left insula) was more active in wiser people in the presence of happy emotions.

“This study shows that the inverse relationship between loneliness and wisdom that we found in our previous clinical studies is, at least in part, rooted in neurobiology and is not simply the result of subjective biases.”explained another study author, specialist Dilip V. Jeste, senior associate dean of the Center for Healthy Aging at the University of San Diego.

“These findings are relevant to people’s mental and physical health because they give us objective neurobiological control over how those who are more alone or wiser process information,” Mishra added. Having biological markers that we can measure in the brain can help us develop effective treatments. Perhaps we can help answer the question of whether it is possible to make a person wiser or less lonely.. The answer could help mitigate the risk of loneliness ”.

The team plans to test these results over a longer period of time, as well as to determine the effectiveness of certain drugs on the result. “Ultimately, we believe these evidence-based cognitive brain markers are the key to developing better healthcare for the future that can fight the epidemic of loneliness,” Mishra concluded.

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