Being lonely can shrink your BRAIN and increase your risk of dementia, research shows
- Researchers in Japan looked at MRI scans of 8,896 people aged 65 and older
- People with the lowest level of social contact had a significantly smaller brain volume
Social isolation in older people can cause the brain to shrink in volume.
A lack of social contact and missing the brain stimulation that comes from conversation has previously been linked to dementia.
Researchers wanted to understand how being isolated affects the brain, so they looked at 8,896 people ages 65 and older who underwent MRI scans.
The volunteers in the study were asked how often they had contact with relatives and friends who did not live with them, such as meeting up or making phone calls.
They could select the answer every day, several times a week, several times a month, or rarely.
The link between a lack of social contact and a smaller brain, found in older Japanese people, turned out to be true even when other factors that can affect the brain, including a person’s weight, smoking and alcohol habits, and whether they had diabetes, were found. taken into account
People with the lowest level of social contact had a significantly smaller brain volume compared to those with the most social contact.
Their total brain volume, the sum of white and gray matter, as a percentage of total volume within the skull, was 67.3 percent in the lowest contact group compared to 67.8 percent in the highest contact group.
They also had lower brain volume in brain regions, including the hippocampus and amygdala, which play a role in memory and are linked to dementia.
The hippocampus is one of the first areas affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
It may be that a lack of social contact accelerates the gradual shrinkage of the brain, which occurs as people age.
However, people who are isolated also tend to have more unhealthy lifestyles, which can be bad for their brains.
Dr. Toshiharu Ninomiya, senior author of the study, from Kyushu University in Japan, said: ‘Social isolation is a growing problem for older adults.
“These results suggest that providing people with support to help them form and maintain their connections with others may be beneficial in preventing brain atrophy and the development of dementia.”
The link between a lack of social contact and a smaller brain, found in older Japanese people, turned out to be true even when other factors that can affect the brain, including a person’s weight, smoking and alcohol habits, and whether they had diabetes, were found. taken into account.
But the study, published in the journal Neurology, notes that people who lose brain volume may see personality changes, such as becoming more apathetic.
That may lead to them seeing people less often, rather than making people less likely to be the cause of brain changes.
The socially isolated people in the study also had more small lesions in the brain called white matter lesions than the people with frequent social contact.
The proportion of intracranial volume consisting of white matter lesions was 0.30 percent for the socially isolated group, compared to 0.26 percent for the most socially connected group.
The researchers found that depression, which is linked to brain shrinkage, partially explains the relationship between social isolation and brain volumes.
However, symptoms of depression explained only a small part of this result.
Dr. Ninomiya said: ‘While this study is a snapshot and does not establish that social isolation causes brain atrophy, some studies have shown that exposing the elderly to socially stimulating groups halted or even reversed brain volume decline and improved thinking and memory skills. , so it is possible that interventions to improve people’s social isolation could prevent loss of brain volume and the often subsequent dementia.’