Video: https://www.tiktok.com/@distilledscience/video/7485116029312470302
Transcript
Have you ever felt so lonely that you feel sick and don't even have the energy to go and see people when you get the chance? I call it the solitude spiral and there's a scientific explanation for why it happens, and maybe a way out. Welcome back to What the Science Relationships Week, part three. Here's how it works. When you feel lonely, your body responds physically. Your immune system becomes more active, creating inflammation, sending out chemical signaling molecules called pro-inflammatory cytokine. This is like your body preparing for threats, since ancestrally being alone was pretty dangerous. See my last video. But this inflammation affects your brain in surprising ways. It makes you more sensitive to rejection and social negativity. Your brain becomes extra alert to social threats. But it also makes you crave connection with your close friends and family. Scientists at UCLA show this connection with a really cool experiment. They gave volunteers a safe dose of endotoxy, a substance that triggers temporary inflammation. Then they scanned their brains while showing them different pictures. The results were fascinating. When inflamed, people's brains, their amygdala, became twice as sensitive. to social threats like angry faces compared to physical threats like snakes. But at the same time, their brains showed increased activity in their reward centers, the ventral striatum, when viewing photos of friends and family. And participants reported feeling more socially disconnected, even after accounting for physical symptoms. These responses may also have evolved to help us slow the spread of disease, but it creates a tricky solitude spiral. Feeling lonely triggers inflammation, which makes you avoid being social, But this experiment also suggests a way out. Make an effort to spend time with close friends and family, which will be easier and helps you feel less lonely and break out of that dangerous spiral. So if you're feeling stuck and have a friend, or you have a friend who you think is stuck, send them this video and then ask them to hang out.
Additional notes
Replying to @Avisha - 🧬Science Made Simple
References
- UCLA endotoxin/inflammation brain-imaging experiment discussed in transcript; title/source URL/DOI/PMID not listed in workbook.