Loneliness Affects How The Brain Operates | Hacker News Reader

Loneliness Affects How The Brain Operates

sciencedaily.com

19 pointspeter12315 comments

"Although loneliness may be influence brain activity, the research also suggests that activity in the ventral striatum may prompt feelings of loneliness, Decety said. 'The study raises the intriguing possibility that loneliness may result from reduced reward-related activity in the ventral striatum in response to social rewards.'"

So it is not clear here what is cause and what is effect. It's time to set up an experimental study design

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

and see if that can be teased out. Meanwhile, a young hacker might proactively seek the company of more human beings.

  a young hacker might proactively seek the company of more human beings.

I'm puzzled here. I'm sure it's just an unfortunate turn of phrase, but you seem to suggest that the others are more human than the young hacker. Lovely.

Interesting play on the definition of "human" indeed. As a hacker myself I find that an interesting train of thought.

If you go by the popular definition for "human" that distinguishes us from the other mammals by defining us as "social beings" then that statement isn't even so far offbase. The process of [computer] hacking is often inherently unsocial after all. Yes, we do spend hours on end in front of a screen, often without or with only very little social interaction taking place.

So, technically, by that definition, our profession makes us less human than, say, a callcenter agent who talks to other humans all day.

Well, okay I admit that argument falls apart pretty quickly. But interesting train of thought nonetheless...

You wouldn't have interpreted the sentence that way had I written, "a young hacker might proactively seek the company of more people," which was responsive to the main point of the article however I chose my vocabulary.

New York Magazine had an interesting article recently: Is Urban Loneliness a Myth? http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/

Anecdotes aren't data, I know, but I've been in NYC for 2 weeks now, have had something to do with people I like more than half the evenings I've been here, and I'm still starting to feel the weight of the city. I'm coming from SF, where I went out far less often, but I somehow didn't feel lonely at all in that town.

I think the big difference here is that it's just so in your face, how much of a bubble everyone keeps around them when dealing with strangers and casual acquaintances, but also how warm people can be when they let someone in. It's harder than I expected to hear people laughing loudly with each other on the subway, or to walk past crowded restaurants in the cold, even when you just came from that situation yourself.

fMRI technology (which allows us to see what part of the brain is used during cognitive processes for those who didn’t read the article) is going to be one of the bigger items in the future and while I find the research interesting I’m not sure what it necessarily proves. It’s fascinating to see how these people’s brains are working but as a society what we’re really looking for is the cause of that activity. Are they born that way? Do their brains adapt over time? Etc...

That’s the real relevant question. Martin Lindstrom wrote a book about his experiments with fMRI technology in trying to determine buying trends (http://www.amazon.com/Buyology-Truth-Lies-About-Why/dp/03855...) and to be honest I didn’t find the conclusions he reached much more compelling than those that people had reached without an fMRI.

I guess what I’m saying is that using the fMRI is like the Neanderthal watching a tornado. He can see it but he doesn’t understand it or know how to avoid it yet so that information is of limited use. Still a step forward for him, but not by all that much.

    Cacioppo, one of the nation's leading scholars on 
    loneliness, has shown that loneliness undermines health 
    and can be as detrimental as smoking

If they saw a correlation between loneliness and bad health, it does not necessarily mean that the former caused the latter. Perhaps sickly looking women are more likely to be lonely?

Or perhaps when ill we feel a greater need for companionship?

It should be pointed out that there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. Not everyone who is alone is lonely. (That's why the article speaks of "perceived loneliness").

Aloneness is crucial for productivity, flow depends on not being interrupted. The art is to configure one's environment in such a way that balances aloneness and social contact.

This title is a catch 22 -- loneliness is an emotion (aka brain state)! Hence of course it affects the brain, and the brain affects it ;-)

No, they mean that loneliness doesn't just affect the inputs into an algorithm, but the algorithm itself.

Not that it devalues the article, but just FYI the researcher mentioned

http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/cacioppo/index...

has been doing press in the last some months with regard to his book

http://scienceofloneliness.com/?q=homepage [all Flash site]

http://www.wpr.org/book/090201b.cfm [archived show is Real format]

http://wpr.org/kathleendunn/index.cfm?strDirection=Prev&... [archived show is Real format]

As for loneliness itself, I tend to be towards the high end (in more quantity that desired) of social isolation. My anecdotal experience is that it does become self-reinforcing and that it does, in this circumstance, diminish life experience including my perceived neurological function.

Where are you at? If you're in NYC, let's grab a beer sometime. (Anyone else reading this, feel free to take the offer as well. Beer is good.)

Thank you for the invitation -- I appreciate it. I'm in the Chicagoland (as it's called) area. I have some friends in New York, but haven't been out that way recently. Travel is minimal until I find my next gig, but if I'm out that way, I might give a shout.

If you make it to Chitown, feel free to drop a note. (Didn't this site used to support messaging? I'll have to drop an email address into my profile.) I'm not the most exciting company, but I do recall a good pub or three. Plus, you have to get a "cheezborger cheezborger" from the original Billy Goat Tavern.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Goat_Tavern

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