美国麻省理工学院Livia Tomova团队取得最新进展。严重的社会孤立会唤起中脑类似饥饿的渴望反应。2020年11月23日出版的《自然-神经科学》杂志发表了这一成果。

当人们被迫彼此孤立时，他们是否渴望社交互动？为了解决这个问题，他们使用功能磁共振成像来测量参与者（n = 40）经历了10h的强制性禁食或完全的社会隔离后，食物和社交因素引起的神经反应。隔离后，人们感到孤独和渴望社交互动。中脑区域在禁食后表现出对食物因素的选择性激活，在隔离后表现出对社会因素的选择性激活。这些反应与自我报告的渴望相关。 相比之下，纹状体和皮质区域在渴望食物和渴望社交之间有区别。在所有的剥夺过程中，他们发现剥夺会缩小并集中大脑对被剥夺目标的动机反应。

他们的研究结果支持了一个直观的想法，即严重隔离会引起社会渴望，类似于禁食会导致饥饿。

附：英文原文

Title: Acute social isolation evokes midbrain craving responses similar to hunger

Author: Livia Tomova, Kimberly L. Wang, Todd Thompson, Gillian A. Matthews, Atsushi Takahashi, Kay M. Tye, Rebecca Saxe

Issue&Volume: 2020-11-23

Abstract: When people are forced to be isolated from each other, do they crave social interactions To address this question, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural responses evoked by food and social cues after participants (n=40) experienced 10h of mandated fasting or total social isolation. After isolation, people felt lonely and craved social interaction. Midbrain regions showed selective activation to food cues after fasting and to social cues after isolation; these responses were correlated with self-reported craving. By contrast, striatal and cortical regions differentiated between craving food and craving social interaction. Across deprivation sessions, we found that deprivation narrows and focuses the brain’s motivational responses to the deprived target. Our results support the intuitive idea that acute isolation causes social craving, similar to the way fasting causes hunger.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-00742-z

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00742-z