Research Hit: Your Brain on Loneliness

I confess I enjoy being alone (I also enjoy company) but I rarely feel lonely which is good for me because loneliness is a major predictor of social well-being and therefore also mental health issues.

During the pandemic rates of loneliness have reached their own epidemic levels according to Harvard. This is why I read with great interest this research from the end of 2020 comparing loneliness data with brain scanning data.

What did they find?

First off, let’s understand that this was a big study — it used data from an open data base of 40'000 people. For brain scanning studies that is gigantic (most have less than 20 participants). And the results?