Hungry? Lonely? Your brain reacts the same way to both

When was the last time you met a close friend, in real life, and not on a video call? “Our finding fits the intuitive idea that positive social interactions are a basic human need, and acute loneliness is an aversive state that motivates people to repair what is lacking, similar to hunger,” said Rebecca Saxe, the John W. Jarve Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the study. “The researchers focused on a part of the brain called the substantia nigra, a tiny structure located in the midbrain, which has previously been linked with hunger cravings and drug cravings,” the release explains. Saxe said that these new findings could help the researchers answer more questions, including how social isolation affects people’s behaviour, whether virtual social interactions, like video calls, help alleviate cravings for social interaction, and how isolation affects different age groups. The substantia nigra is believed to share evolutionary origins with a brain region in mice called the dorsal raphe nucleus, which is the area that Tye’s lab showed was active following social isolation in their 2016 study, the release explains.