Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
Department of Psychology and Centre for Psychosocial Health, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2018 Sep 11;13(9):995-1002. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsy067.
Loneliness results from lacking satisfied social connections. However, little is known how trait loneliness, which is a stable personal characteristic, is influenced by different types of social support (i.e. emotional and instrumental support) through the brain activity associated with loneliness. To explore these questions, data of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI) of 92 healthy participants were analyzed. We identified loneliness-related brain regions by correlating participants' loneliness scores with amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) of R-fMRI data. We then conducted mediation analyses to test whether the negative relation between each type of social support and loneliness was explained via the neural activity in the loneliness-related brain regions. The results showed that loneliness was positively related to the mean ALFF value within right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG). In addition, the negative relation between emotional support and loneliness was explained by a decrease in the spontaneous neural activity within right ITG but this pattern was not observed for instrumental support. These results suggest the importance of social information processing on trait loneliness and highlight the need to differentiate the functions of different types of social support on mental health from a neural perspective.
孤独感源于缺乏满意的社交关系。然而，人们对于特质孤独（一种稳定的个人特征）如何受到不同类型的社会支持（即情感支持和工具支持）通过与孤独相关的大脑活动的影响知之甚少。为了探索这些问题，我们分析了 92 名健康参与者的静息态功能磁共振成像（R-fMRI）数据。我们通过将参与者的孤独评分与 R-fMRI 数据的低频振幅（ALFF）相关联来确定与孤独相关的大脑区域。然后，我们进行了中介分析，以测试每种类型的社会支持与孤独感之间的负相关关系是否通过与孤独相关的大脑区域的神经活动来解释。结果表明，孤独感与右侧颞下回（ITG）内的平均 ALFF 值呈正相关。此外，情感支持与孤独感之间的负相关关系可以通过右侧 ITG 内自发神经活动的减少来解释，但对于工具支持则没有观察到这种模式。这些结果表明社会信息处理对特质孤独感的重要性，并强调需要从神经角度区分不同类型的社会支持对心理健康的作用。
