According to a new study published in the journal, loneliness was associated with a decrease in the amount of gray matter in the brain in men. cerebral cortex. This association appeared to be particularly strong in men with depression, whereas it was not found in women.
Study author Zhenhong He and colleagues wanted to investigate whether there were abnormalities in gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain in people with major depressive disorder. Compared to the brains of healthy individuals.
The researchers also tried to determine whether loneliness was linked to structural changes in these areas of the brain.
This point is important, because gray matter—composed primarily of neuronal cells, dendrites, and unmyelinated axons—is used to process and interpret information in the brain.
Gray matter and solitude: an analysis of thousands of brains
In this study, brain data from men and women were analyzed and compared separately. The data comes from the database “UK Biobank”, Included were 21,402 people who underwent magnetic resonance imaging of the brain. The researchers excluded from their cohort participants with extremely low or high gray matter volume in these regions and individuals who reported a diagnosis of a neurological or neurodevelopmental disorder.
Participants were classified into three categories based on the number of depressive episodes or not. Loneliness was assessed based on answers to these two questions: “Do you often feel alone?” And “How often can you trust a loved one?”
After removing all participants with incomplete data, the final sample for analysis consisted of 339 men with major depressive disorder and 3,781 healthy male participants. The female sample included data from 666 people with major depressive disorder and 3,466 healthy women.
Gray matter and loneliness: 44% of French people are worried
Results showed that men with major depressive disorder had lower gray matter volume in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. This difference was not observed in females.
In men with major depressive disorder, single individuals had smaller gray mass volumes in the left and right regions of the anterior cingulate cortex and in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In healthy men, lone individuals have lower gray matter volume in the right anterior cingulate cortex. Again, these associations did not exist in women.
“Our results demonstrate the negative impact of loneliness on brain health and the potential for a direct and measurable effect of social connectedness on brain volume in men vulnerable to depression.” Conclude the authors of the study.
Loneliness is a part of everyday life for the French. According to an IFOP/Flashes survey for animal insurer Goodflare, 44% of them admitted to feeling lonely on a regular basis. Among these lonely people, 18% admit to experiencing this feeling often or even almost every day.
