Forced social isolation causes neural craving similar to hunger

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/forced-social-isolation-causes-neural-craving-similar-to-hunger/

by prostoalex • 6 years ago

217 134 6 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

tomrod• 6 years ago

This... makes a lot of sense. I get hunger cravings even when full when I have those 70+ (rare) or even 55+ (more often) hour weeks.

Swizec• 6 years ago

when I have those 70+ (rare) or even 55+ (more often) hour weeks

This is likely a different phenomena. You're burning more fuel by working longer. Especially if it comes with less sleep as well.

The brain is quite a fuel-hungry organ and will crave sugars and carbs when stressed. If you're also sleeping less, you're burning more physical energy as well simply by being active longer.

I regularly lose weight during hard weeks unless I compensate by eating more.

Nav_Panel3• 6 years ago

This was Maslow's point from back in the 40s, that there's no real distinction between physiological and social hunger, besides the fact of an importance hierarchy (one needs to be decently fed in order to start caring a lot about sociality, although even a person in starvation may care somewhat).

Glad to see it's being neurologically researched as well.

richardbrevig2• 6 years ago

Yes, all needs in the hierarchy are basic and necessary!

somerandomqaguy• 6 years ago

I wouldn't classify social interaction as a need. There's plenty of examples of people without any human contact surviving, to the point that we have a well established word for these people; hermit.

Imperial Japanese holdouts after the end of WW2 are the classical example, and to a lesser degree you have hikikomori in modern day. The most extreme example is Christopher Thomas Knight (the North Pond Hermit) with only one claim instance of human interaction in that period; he said, "Hi" to a hiker.

A need has a specific meaning; more or less, you will die if you don't have water for more then a week. It doesn't matter how strong willed you are, lack of water will kill you. Lack of social interaction will not universally kill everyone.

davidw• 6 years ago

I have been having backyard beers with a friend at a time, at a distance, on nice days. Feels safe enough and it is nice to see friends!

amelius• 6 years ago

In some circles, there's even an expression for a related phenomenon: "skin hunger"

https://globalnews.ca/news/6929793/coronavirus-disability-to...

LUmBULtERA• 6 years ago

I feel like they could have come up with a better name.

the-peter• 6 years ago

Interestingly there is a Japanese phrase 'kuchi sabishii' that translates to 'lonely mouth' which means you aren't hungry but want to snack.

cameronbrown• 6 years ago

Would explain why I'm eating a bowl of cereal at 9PM nowadays...

I would encourage people to see friends at a distance whenever possible. We must remember to balance our mental health (greatly affected by seeing others) with our physical health.

rajeevtfi• 6 years ago

Eric Berne talked about this long time back in 1964 in his book "Games People Play"

Nav_Panel3• 6 years ago

Hah yes the classic "8 stroke American greeting" to prevent "spinal shriveling", good stuff.

rb8083• 6 years ago

Honestly its scary the talk of another year like this. I have a family and even with them around living all day in my apt is starting to drive me crazy. I'd hate to be living by myself. Its a lot like solitary confinement.

My Brother had the bug, had a mild cough for a few days and lost his taste. I'm very jealous.

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

Honestly its scary the talk of another year like this.

I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting you will not be able to leave your house for another year. I think everywhere has concrete plans to re-open everything short of mass gatherings pretty soon. That's the cautious countries and the less cautious countries alike.

rb8083• 6 years ago

Yeah I go outside 2-3 times a week already. I just want to visit my parents, sit at a proper desk, and have my children play with some friends.

whatshisface2• 6 years ago

The open or closed status of everything has little to do with whether or not you should engage in non-essential visits. Policymakers do not schedule the virus.

nprz2• 6 years ago

Currently around ~5% of the US has contracted COVID. 60-70% of the population needs to become infected in order to gain herd immunity. Meaning we're about 7% of the way to herd immunity. We still have a long way to go.

selimthegrim• 6 years ago

I guess he can eat the same food all the time now then

stronglikedan• 6 years ago

Texture is (just/almost) as important as taste!

bonestamp2• 6 years ago

The one person I know who had covid said they didn't want to eat anything. It wasn't just that you lose taste/smell, it's that everything tasted/smelled funny.

curiousgal2• 6 years ago

Try spending 2+ months in an 18m² apartment alone AND under the obligation of following courses and studying for exams. Being a college student in a French elite school sucks.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Is that a CitéU? Or just your avg. attic conversion?

(But yes it sucks)

cortesoft2• 6 years ago

It's funny because I am having the opposite issue... stuck at home with my wife and two young kids, and what I want is MORE alone time. I need daycare!

saganus• 6 years ago

One of the things that scares me a lot about covid is the risk of losing my sense of smell and/or taste.

So I'm not sure if I would be jealous of your brother.

I mean, sure, I'm also tired of this, but just thinking that I could potentially never smell coffee again, or taste avocado or not being able to notice the scent of my partner, or lot of other things... it's terryfing.

ericol8• 6 years ago

More or less for my entire life I've had the idea that my social needs were not on par with the rest of the people, and this quarantine seems to have proven just that.

Bear in mind I do enjoy social life; when I was living in Spain in my 30s (and single) I had a very active social life, and had a moderate (~30) amount of friends split in 2 groups with which I continuously interacted.

When I left Spain for my place of origin I had only a handful of friends, and then I moved to where I live now and have only one friend, whom I see sporadically.

Nowadays I mostly interact with my partner and daughter, and the people I work with (I've been working remotely for 13 years) and to be honest, I have no cravings for social life (Except that I miss going for a stroll every once in a while at nights).

tehlike• 6 years ago

That explains fair amount of us, I think. I'm on the same camp. It makes it a bit challenging as my wife is extremely social, so finding balance is a bit tough for both of us :)

obiefernandez• 6 years ago

I have the same issue. My wife is going absolutely stir-crazy and dreaming of all the adventures, while I'm absolutely happy to be productive at home with relatively few distractions.

briefcomment• 6 years ago

Can you really call living with your family isolation? There are people out there who live with no one, aren't near family, and can't see friends because of the lockdowns.

Trasmatta• 6 years ago

Yep, this me. I haven't been able to see friends or family since March 15th. So I haven't even touched another human in that long. It's been really bad for my mental health. I have a hard time empathising with people who say they've been super lonely but still live with family.

ericol8• 6 years ago

Well, guess you are correct here, I can't call my current situation isolation.

But there have been times where I've been there (My partner tends to go on extended vacations with her mother) and, even without quarantine, I've been locked up all by myself only going out a couple of times a week only for grocery shopping.

I enjoy reading an investigating things (And for programming related discoveries, time gets consumed too fast) probably a bit too much, and there are times when even family comes in the way.

kharak• 6 years ago

This fits me, and I have 0 problems with it. Do I want to see my friends again? Yes. But as I don´t live in my home country anymore, I´m accustomed to only seeing friends and families a couple of times a year.

Takes a bit of effort and empathy to remember that I'm an outlier and people truly did suffer during lockdown.

I really wonder, how many people are there like me? What's the distribution? You naturally hear mostly from social people and extroverts. Hope there are some studies going on right now.

jxramos• 6 years ago

Exactly, family is its own community.

Barrin92• 6 years ago

there are even more severe forms of isolation, but yes only spending time around the nuclear family is a form of isolation. Friends, peers, church (or secular equivalents), the wider community and so on all provide forms of social interaction that don't exist within the immediate family and that humans generally are accustomed too and need.

In fact, the detrimental effects of long term isolation only surrounded by the nuclear family is a common theme in American fiction in particular (American Beauty), or even in horror as in The Shining.

cortesoft2• 6 years ago

Yes, this has certainly solidified my understanding of myself as an introvert... I am stuck home with my wife and two young kids, and I mostly want more alone time... I don't miss seeing other people.

ethagnawl• 6 years ago

Same here. Though, I do wonder if it'd be a case of _be careful what you wish for_ if, for some reason, all of the sudden I was completely isolated.

pgt• 6 years ago

Being around your partner and daughter is social.

ericol8• 6 years ago

Well, yes. But it's not the same, and I'm in this boat as well:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460927

m463• 6 years ago

Sounds like a normal introvert.

extroverts get recharged by being with more people.

introverts get recharged by being with fewer people.

ericol8• 6 years ago

Regarding that matter, I found this comment also in this thread interesting:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23462232

totetsu• 6 years ago

I think social needs are not static, it depends on what you are become used to.

pingyong• 6 years ago

I've been almost completely alone for about 3 months now, at least physically. And honestly... I couldn't feel much happier in that regard. It's been great. Maybe I'm broken or something.

NLMichel• 6 years ago

Not broken just a different type of person. See this episode from Mythbusters about Cabin Fever: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2m7k1y

You're more like Jamie.

tripzilch2• 6 years ago

If you live with a partner and a daughter, you're not socially isolated.

I really get a strong feeling that a lot of people who do not live alone, have no idea what others who live alone actually went through (during lockdown / quarantine). It's hard to explain, it's like being lost at sea, maybe. My mind just started blanking all the time

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

We need to ban solitary confinement in prisons.

rb8083• 6 years ago

I have a lot more sympathy for animals in the zoo as well.

belltaco• 6 years ago

In some countries it's illegal to have just one of a kind of some animals as a pet.

djsumdog• 6 years ago

I have never liked zoos! The animals look so sad. The San Diego and Cincinnati zoos are very large and that helps, but I still don't enjoy going to them. The reptiles are usually fine, but many of the mammals really shouldn't be locked up like that. A polar bear swims up to 600km a day in the wild.

I like aquariums. Most fish are fine in a big enough tank; turtles too. I avoid aquariums with Dolphins or Whales. Considering how much they swim in the while, that seems cruel too.

LargoLasskhyfv• 6 years ago

Stressfressen

kaybe2• 6 years ago

Kummerspeck

starpilot• 6 years ago

I just haven't been able to read books when I've been isolated a lot. It's just like my mind can't focus, it's so anxious and doesn't considering the reading to be important. My theory is it's similar to waking up in the middle of the night when lonely. The mind is searching for dangers from being isolated and alone.

I also notice my urge to buy stuff goes up when I am lonely. Another salve for the pain.

op03• 6 years ago

Cravings are satisfied a thousand different ways these days. Social interaction has a lot of competition.

smcameron• 6 years ago

I've lived alone my whole adult life. I haven't seen anyone I know since March 8. Doesn't seem to bother me. Guess I'm a freak.

searchableguy2• 6 years ago

I think there is also difference in the type of people. I feel people on the spectrum are able to empathize over text more than others and so can socialize somewhat more or feel less need to.

phkahler• 6 years ago

This makes sense to me because I dont think the feeling we call hunger is actually our bodies call to eat. I think from an evolutionary origin it is supposed to be a call to action. If that is so, then social isolation could trigger the same feeling.

esotericn3• 6 years ago

Er, yeah, I've been saying this for months.

We are social animals. Literally just existing is stressful at the moment for most of us, because there's a constant urge that is not being satisfied.

Not only for socialisation but simply the low-level stress of constantly having to 'check yourself' when you realise literally everything you'd normally be doing is either disabled or handicapped in some way.

To me, lockdowns feel like some sort of irrational loss aversion strategy. If you gave me the option in, say, 2017, of halving my mortality rate for a year, but the cost was that I had to endure relatively strong anxiety for that year, there's no way I'd take that bet regardless of my age.

Mucking around with your mental health is not wise. Add on top of that all of the economic effects, the political effects of dividing populations, domestic abuse, "non-essential" healthcare like dentistry, and so on and so forth, and honestly I reckon it's been a net negative.

null0pointer• 6 years ago

We should definitely be beginning to examine the mental health toll the lockdowns are having on people. Changing our behaviour for the sole purpose of extending our life expectancies as long as possible is not living at all.

daveFNbuck3• 6 years ago

There are also mental health consequences to large-scale death and hospitals being over capacity. Would you choose a year of watching your friends and family randomly die over a year of staying home most of the time?

esotericn3• 6 years ago

I believe my comment about halving mortality addresses this.

They're already likely to arbitrarily die - if in 2017 I could reduce that probability by half (coronavirus roughly doubles mortality across all age groups) by having everyone stay inside or perform the various rituals like standing far apart, wearing masks etc I wouldn't do it.

If instead of decreasing life expectancy by less than a year it were something like 10 (and so we went full hazmat, disallowing things like even entering a supermarket in favour of MRE deliveries) then the calculus would be different.

The main inescapable issue, which exists lockdown or not, is visiting elderly or immunocompromised relatives, not because of the absolute risk, but because of the impact that being able to say "my visit probably killed Grandma" would have.

burnout41• 6 years ago

You could always get both.

I haven't seen another human other than through zoom since march 15th.

Meanwhile, my extended family, people I love, are ignoring isolation mandates and out and about, hosting gatherings, like normal. Many of them are seniors with chronic conditions that put them at high risk for covid complications / mortality.

I'm depressed as fuck staying home all the time and waiting for the inevitable as covid reaps my loved ones.

retsibsi• 6 years ago

Mortality isn't everything. You don't seem to be taking into account the suffering of people who survive -- but are often very sick for quite a long time, and may never fully recover -- and the extra anxiety caused by an unchecked deadly pandemic. (Or if you are, you don't seem to think it is very significant?) In this comment you also seem to ignore that the trade-off isn't just about increasing your risk, but everyone's, including the people you care about -- though I think you acknowledge it in another reply.

Even if I got lucky enough that nobody close to me died and I suffered no permanent damage myself, personally I would feel immense anxiety knowing that the virus was likely to affect many of the people I care about (and also that I had limited but non-zero control over this, so I could neither try to ignore it nor bring the odds down far enough to feel optimistic), watching some of them suffer and wondering whether they would make it, possibly suffering myself and wondering how bad it would get and how fully I would recover, and so on. That's aside from the effect of empathising with strangers suffering and dying at a much higher rate than usual, too.

(I'm in Australia, where so far our measures have kept the infection rate very low. Maybe you feel like you've experienced something closer to the worst of both worlds?)

TheSpiceIsLife• 6 years ago

I'm in Tasmania, the State and the people here have done a very reasonable job.

Tasmania: 13 deaths, 228 confirmed cases, zero new cases in the past 24hrs, 33,000 test conducted.

Active cases in Tasmania: 2

The restrictions here have certainly had an impact on our lives, and I can hardly imagine how it would feel to be in an area with many more cases and more strict restrictions.

WhompingWindows• 6 years ago

The problem with your analysis is that you're not considering just how much "loss" we were averting via lockdowns. Do you think those negative effects of our partial lockdowns outweigh 5X more COVID casualties, including many from preventable deaths that have nothing to do with COVID? We need a functional healthcare system, we could not allow it to become overwhelmed and collapse. There's also the ethical issue of allowing a disease to run rampant and ravage our elderly population - could we recover morally and ethically if we allowed 100's of thousands of older folks to die long, painful deaths so our economy was a tad stronger?

Wh1zz• 6 years ago

On that last part, I will confess it's unclear to me what the greater moral failing is between the 100s of thousands of elderly deaths, and lost economic growth. It comes down to how much is actually lost of course, and while I do believe what we're collectively going for is a good middle ground, I think also a lot of people don't really understand the magnitude of effects of economic growth over long periods of time.

The difference between growth of 2% and 3% are enormous 50 years down the line, and may very well translate in many more deaths due to poverty and disease, as well as a great quality of life difference for billions of people (among many other effects).

fyfy18• 6 years ago

I've found this period has had an overall positive effect on my mental health. At first I was rather depressed, religiously following the news and subreddits about what was happening, but after a couple of weeks of that I realised I couldn't continue living like that forever. I started introspecting and tried to figure out what was causing the stress and low level anxiety I've been experiencing for a few years.

During this period I feel like I have figured a lot of things out, and overall feel more relaxed now than I did before quarantine. I realised that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to achieve things, and I don't need to - at first I used the pandemic situation as an excuse to myself to not have to do these things, but now I just feel naturally relaxed.

Also as a newish (1 year old) father I found talks by Gabor Maté resonated a lot with me.

(And I've somehow lost 6kg - even though I've been cooking whatever tasty deserts I've found on YouTube - probably from not eating out)

esotericn3• 6 years ago

This is totally ad hominem but I'm just going to go for it, because I think you've missed the point of what 'social isolation' is -

"Also as a newish (1 year old) father I found talks by Gabor Maté resonated a lot with me."

I assume your child (and partner) haven't been 200 miles away for 3 months, inaccessible because taking a train is pseudo-illegal or frowned upon by society at the moment.

I assume you've been cuddling them without thinking that every journey, every interaction point, is some 'vector' bullshit.

If I'm making the wrong assumptions here, and you're actually watching your child's formative years through a video link, I feel for you, but I can't believe that's the case because there's no way that a normal human would claim that were a superior state of affairs.

Come on, man. Please think before posting.

danybittel2• 6 years ago

"We are social animals." Are we though? We're not like a flock of fish, herd of sheep, pack of wolves not even like apes. Or when was the last time you met a silverback human?

If we keep indoctrinate that, we may miss the real solutions.

adelHBN• 6 years ago

According to a May 25, 2020, WSJ article (https://www.wsj.com/articles/together-review-all-the-lonely-... of Americans felt lonely during the Covid-19 crisis. While this percentage is higher than normal, the issue is not new. 2-3 years ago President Trump brought on a "loneliness" advisor (not for himself, for Americans), and since at least 2018 the UK has a Minister of Loneliness. This is becoming a global issue, including in China, where children are not spending time with their elderly parents the way their previous generations did.

pteraspidomorph• 6 years ago

Like for many people here, my need for socialization seems to be vastly inferior to the average. However, after years of living very isolated, I can strongly relate to the craving as it's described in this article.

cletus• 6 years ago

I am an introvert. Many people (including many introverts) thinks this means you don't like people or social gatherings. That's not the case. Or at least it's not necessarily true.

Here's the best way I can describe it: being an introvert means that social interactions cost you energy. Being an extrovert (since I'm not one) seems to mean that social interactions gain you energy.

I see this in a relative of mine who is clearly an extrovert. Social interactions are her drug. She craves them and gets almost like a high from them and honestly gets really hyper as a result.

Compare this to me. At work I've had these extended work gatherings for several days where it's a lot of team-building, brainstorming and so on. By the end of the day I'm physically exhausted from all these interactions. Some people are not. Some will go to dinner in the evenings then out to a bar to drink and then back to someone's Airbnb for another gathering after that. That's all fine for them but it's just way too much for me.

So it's not like I don't like interacting with these people. It's merely a question of how much mental energy I'm capable of expending before I need to recharge.

So you see these differences really exposed by the forced isolation. I miss some of the interaction (and, to be fair, the food) of being in the office but otherwise I'm fine. You can clearly see that other people are not. While I have a natural excuse to avoid many draining activities, others are clearly being denied their recharging activities.

So yeah, I can totally buy neural cravings here. For some.

pengaru• 6 years ago

For me, part of the draining effect isn't just due to being an introvert... it's because I tend to engage far too willingly in what most would treat as shallow casual interactions.

I tend to treat even strangers with too much respect to give them less than my full attention and thoughtful responses. That makes it a draining chore.

searchableguy2• 6 years ago

I wonder what people will think of criminal and justice systems after this (probably nothing). We send people to prisons all the time for extended period without outside contact in an abusive environment between the real nasty criminals and authorities.

Is it really a good idea to send someone to prison for months for a small mistake that many might end up making and getting caught?

Is overusing imprisonment for different types of crimes okay?

A murderer will be fine in a prison since they are harmful for the society but someone stealing food because they couldn't afford any doesn't seem as harmful that they need being locked up.

danybittel2• 6 years ago

I call bullshit. I stopped reading at the setup: "the researchers had 40 socially-connected healthy human adults spend 10 hours (9am to 7pm) alone, with no social interaction and no other social stimulation (e.g., twitter, email, reading fiction)." All they did was deprive them of social media. I think it's well known by now that this is a source of dopamin.

ddeck• 6 years ago

Additionally, they also forced them to get up in the early morning on the social isolation day, locked them in an unfamiliar room, and gave them close to nothing to do:

On the day of the isolation session, participants arrived at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT building 46, at 8.15am...Subsequently, participants gave their phones and laptops to the experimenter and were guided to a room containing an armchair, a desk and office chair, and a fridge with a selection of food, snacks and beverages. Participants remained in that room from 9am until 7pm. [1]

It's not clear to me why reading material was withheld. It seems to make it harder to draw conclusions regarding the social isolation aspect.

For the fasting session, they only had to report for the 7pm fMRI session. It strikes me that the type of people with time to participate in an experiment like this likely correlates with people that get up later than 6-7am each morning (as would have been required for the isolation session), but it seems there wasn't any accounting for possible sleep deprivation effects.

[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.25.006643v2....

kstenerud2• 6 years ago

I've spent the majority of my life in social isolation, mainly because I keep forgetting to maintain relationships. I'd drop off the radar for months on end, until a concerned friend or family member would manage to get in contact with me (I don't use social media because it's too much bother to maintain). In 2001, after the dotcom crash, I took a yearlong sabbatical where I saw no one, spoke to no one, and by the time I was pulled into the open again it hurt to speak.

TBH until I met my wife, I never thought it possible to be comfortable living with someone.

I know I'm an extreme exception, but I'm one of those people who don't feel a craving for human contact.

anonytrary• 6 years ago

That's not forced; that's your choice. I'm someone who also naturally ends up being alone, however, being forced to be alone is a completely different situation. The power of choice is everything and it seems essential to this study.

kstenerud2• 6 years ago

That conclusion of the study is highly suspect. "To address this challenge, the researchers had 40 socially-connected healthy human adults spend 10 hours (9am to 7pm) alone, with no social interaction and no other social stimulation (e.g., twitter, email, reading fiction)."

The subjects chose to spend 10 hours away from all social interaction in order to participate in the study. That's not the same as being forced.

However, the results were striking. Just like choosing to fast from food, choosing to fast from social interaction caused similar cravings in the subjects.

8bitsrule• 6 years ago

People whose chosen occupations require a lot of time away from people they know well -- authors, artists, explorers, prospectors and geologists, traveling musicians and salespersons, fur trappers, truckers for example -- probably cope better with social distancing.

Being isolated for long periods can lead us to difficulty articulating our thoughts well. The 'gears get rusty'. Not so much for authors I'd guess ... but a fading ability to connect no doubt leaves many increasingly frustrated and feeling even more isolated. I'd guess that, for desert travelers, the word 'oasis' meant a lot more than just water.

Forced social isolation causes neural craving similar to hunger

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