School of Psychological Sciences, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave., Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel.
Research Section Medical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Bonn, Venusberg-Campus 1, 53127 Bonn, Germany.
Cereb Cortex. 2022 Dec 20;33(2):385-402. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac073.
Lonely people tend to evaluate social exchanges negatively and to display difficulties in interactions. Interpersonal synchronization is crucial for achieving positive interactions, promoting affinity, closeness, and satisfaction. However, little is known about lonely individuals' ability to synchronize and about their brain activity while synchronizing. Following the screening of 303 participants, we recruited 32 low and 32 high loneliness participants. They were scanned while engaged in movement synchronization, using a novel dyadic interaction paradigm. Results showed that high loneliness individuals exhibited a reduced ability to adapt their movement to their partner's movement. Intriguingly, during movement adaptation periods, high loneliness individuals showed increased activation in the action observation (AO) system, specifically in the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule. They did not show increased activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which in the context of synchronization was suggested to be related to gap-monitoring. Based on these findings, we propose a model according to which lonely people may require stronger activation of their AO system for alignment, to compensate for some deficiency in their synchronization ability. Despite this hyperactivation, they still suffer from reduced synchronization capacity. Consequently, synchronization may be a relevant intervention area for the amelioration of loneliness.
孤独的人往往会对社交互动做出负面评价，并表现出互动困难。人际同步对于实现积极的互动、促进亲和力、亲密感和满足感至关重要。然而，对于孤独个体的同步能力以及他们在同步时的大脑活动，我们知之甚少。在对 303 名参与者进行筛选后，我们招募了 32 名低孤独和 32 名高孤独的参与者。他们在使用新颖的二元互动范式进行运动同步时接受了扫描。结果表明，高孤独个体表现出降低了适应伙伴运动的能力。有趣的是，在运动适应期间，高孤独个体在动作观察（AO）系统中表现出增加的激活，特别是在额下回和顶下小叶。他们在背内侧前额叶皮层没有表现出增加的激活，在同步的背景下，背内侧前额叶皮层被认为与间隙监测有关。基于这些发现，我们提出了一个模型，根据该模型，孤独的人可能需要更强的 AO 系统激活来进行对齐，以弥补他们同步能力的某些不足。尽管这种过度激活，他们仍然遭受同步能力的降低。因此，同步可能是改善孤独感的一个相关干预领域。
