Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2019 Dec;1457(1):5-25. doi: 10.1111/nyas.14016. Epub 2019 Mar 15.
Social connections are vital to survival throughout the animal kingdom and are dynamic across the life span. There are debilitating consequences of social isolation and loneliness, and social support is increasingly a primary consideration in health care, disease prevention, and recovery. Considering social connection as an "innate need," it is hypothesized that evolutionarily conserved neural systems underlie the maintenance of social connections: alerting the individual to their absence and coordinating effector mechanisms to restore social contact. This is reminiscent of a homeostatic system designed to maintain social connection. Here, we explore the identity of neural systems regulating "social homeostasis." We review findings from rodent studies evaluating the rapid response to social deficit (in the form of acute social isolation) and propose that parallel, overlapping circuits are engaged to adapt to the vulnerabilities of isolation and restore social connection. By considering the neural systems regulating other homeostatic needs, such as energy and fluid balance, we discuss the potential attributes of social homeostatic circuitry. We reason that uncovering the identity of these circuits/mechanisms will facilitate our understanding of how loneliness perpetuates long-term disease states, which we speculate may result from sustained recruitment of social homeostatic circuits.
社会联系在整个动物界的生存中至关重要，并且在整个生命周期中都是动态的。社会隔离和孤独会带来身体上的伤害，而社会支持在医疗保健、疾病预防和康复中越来越受到重视。考虑到社会联系是一种“内在需求”，人们假设进化保守的神经系统是维持社会联系的基础：提醒个体注意到社会联系的缺失，并协调效应机制来恢复社会联系。这让人联想到一个旨在维持社会联系的平衡系统。在这里，我们探讨了调节“社会平衡”的神经系统的身份。我们回顾了评估对社会缺陷（以急性社会隔离的形式）快速反应的啮齿动物研究结果，并提出平行、重叠的回路被激活以适应隔离的脆弱性并恢复社会联系。通过考虑调节其他平衡需求（如能量和液体平衡）的神经系统，我们讨论了社会平衡回路的潜在属性。我们推断，揭示这些回路/机制的身份将有助于我们理解孤独如何导致长期疾病状态的持续存在，我们推测这可能是由于社会平衡回路的持续招募所致。
