Loneliness and implicit attention to social threat: A high-performance electrical neuroimaging study

Abstract

Prior research has suggested that loneliness is associated with an implicit hypervigilance to social threats-an assumption in line with the evolutionary model of loneliness that indicates feeling socially isolated (or on the social perimeter) leads to increased attention and surveillance of the social world and an unwitting focus on self-preservation. Little is known, however, about the temporal dynamics for social threat (vs. nonsocial threat) in the lonely brains. We used high-density electrical neuroimaging and a behavioral task including social and nonsocial threat (and neutral) pictures to investigate the brain dynamics of implicit processing for social threat vs. nonsocial threat stimuli in lonely participants (N = 10), compared to nonlonely individuals (N = 9). The present study provides evidence that social threat images are differentiated from nonsocial threat stimuli more quickly in the lonely (~116 ms after stimulus onset) than nonlonely (~252 ms after stimulus onset) brains. That speed of threat processing in lonely individuals is in accord with the evolutionary model of loneliness. Brain source estimates expanded these results by suggesting that lonely (but not nonlonely) individuals showed early recruitment of brain areas involved in attention and self-representation.

Associations between loneliness and personality are mostly driven by a genetic association with Neuroticism

“…Overall, previous studies report the strongest associations between loneliness and either Extraversion or Neuroticism (Atak, ; J. T. Cacioppo et al, ; Lopes et al, ; Mund & Neyer, ; Stephan, Fäth, & Lamm, ; Teppers et al, ; Vanhalst et al, ), which is theoretically plausible. In behavioral and neuroimaging research, loneliness is characterized by an implicit sensitivity to negative social stimuli (J. T. Cacioppo et al, ; J. T. Cacioppo, Norris, Decety, Monteleone, & Nusbaum, ; S. Cacioppo, Balogh, & Cacioppo, ; S. Cacioppo et al, ; Duck, Pond, & Leatham, ) and a decreased sensitivity to positive social stimuli (J. T. Cacioppo et al, ; J. T. Cacioppo & Patrick, ). Neuroticism is characterized by a heightened sensitivity to negative stimuli overall, whereas Extraversion is characterized by a heightened sensitivity to especially social positive stimuli (Larsen & Ketelaar, ; Rusting & Larsen, ).…”

Examining the visual processing patterns of lonely adults

“…In an early fMRI study, Cacioppo, Norris, Decety, Monteleone and Nusbaum () found that lonely people have greater activation in the visual cortex when viewing unpleasant social pictures of people than objects. Two recent EEG studies extended that work and demonstrated that lonely people detect and process social threat more quickly than non‐lonely people when tasks were presented using words (Cacioppo, Balogh & Cacioppo, ) and images (Cacioppo, Bangee, Balogh, Cardenas‐Iniguez, Qualter & Cacioppo, ). Such findings suggest that lonely people show automatic and implicit hypervigilance to social threats in the brain.…”

Why may allopregnanolone help alleviate loneliness?

“…The tools of social neuroscience make it possible to approach loneliness not only by the analysis of subjective self-reports (e.g., UCLA loneliness scale), but also by approaching the automatic (non-conscious) self-preservation mechanisms of loneliness, for instance, using high performance electrical neuroimaging and evoked microstate analyses [13-14]. In lonely individuals, recent studies have shown that the perception of social threat (compared to non-social threat) activates the para-hippocampal and amygdala regions during the early (non-conscious) period (between 116 ms and 136 ms) of information processing [13-14], and the amygdala region (including BNST) modulates the neural responses to social stimuli in the temporo-parietal junction [14].…”

“…The tools of social neuroscience make it possible to approach loneliness not only by the analysis of subjective self-reports (e.g., UCLA loneliness scale), but also by approaching the automatic (non-conscious) self-preservation mechanisms of loneliness, for instance, using high performance electrical neuroimaging and evoked microstate analyses [13-14]. In lonely individuals, recent studies have shown that the perception of social threat (compared to non-social threat) activates the para-hippocampal and amygdala regions during the early (non-conscious) period (between 116 ms and 136 ms) of information processing [13-14], and the amygdala region (including BNST) modulates the neural responses to social stimuli in the temporo-parietal junction [14]. In turn, loneliness is known to be inversely related to the level of activation of the temporo-parietal region bilaterally in response to social threat (compared to non-social threat notably between 116 ms and 124 ms post-stimulus onset; [14]), possibly reflecting a disorder in reading others' intentions, feelings, and others' behaviours or a less focus on others and more on one's own self-preservation in negative social contexts [5, 14, 92].…”

“…Accordingly, loneliness increases both an explicit motivation to connect with others an implicit motivation for self-preservation. Loneliness increases an automatic (non-conscious) hyper-vigilance for social threats, which then can introduce attentional, confirmatory, and memory biases, impulse control, and poor sleep salubrity [5, 10-14]. Given the effects of attention and expectation on anticipated social interactions, behavioral confirmation processes then can incline an individual who feels isolated to have or to place more import on negative social interactions, which if unchecked can reinforce withdrawal, negativity, and feelings of loneliness [10-12] (See Figure 1).…”