Loneliness and social anxiety may have similar symptoms but according to a recently published study, they are driven by different states in the brain.
As specified in a EurekAlert! report, loneliness can have damaging impacts on both physical and mental health, yet there are presently few behavioral interventions for loneliness "like there are for other conditions."
Jana Lieberz and her team explored the basis of the said two conditions by comparing the manner people suffering from social anxiety, and high and low loneliness were behaving in a social gambling task.
In this work, participants were asked to play a computer game where they could make a safe bet and win a small amount of money to make a more dangerous bet to win a larger amount. If the participants took the riskier bet, they would watch a video showing a virtual human exhibiting either his approval or disapproval.
Brain Activity Measured
The study published in the Journal of Neuroscience has shown that people with social anxiety took the safe bet more frequently to avoid social feedback from the videos. However, those with high loneliness did not exhibit such social avoidance.
By gauging the brain activity of the participants, the task involving fMRI, the study investigators discovered that people who have social anxiety exhibited increased amygdala activation while the decision phase was ongoing.
This was an indication of heightened anxiety and lessened "nucleus accumbens activation" during the feedback phase, an indication of reduced social reward, as specified in the research.
Neither activity pattern occurred in individuals who have high loneliness, specifying loneliness as a distinctive condition that requires its own interventions.
Loneliness Resulting Serious Health Problems
A Neuroscience report said that loneliness can result in serious health problems. Adjusting well-established cognitive-behavioral treatments targeting social anxieties might be promising to lessen chronic loneliness given a close association between both constructs.
Nevertheless, a better insight into both behavioral and neurobiological factors linked to loneliness is needed to determine specific mechanisms of social anxiety are shared by lonely people.
Additionally, the researchers discovered lonely people exhibit a consistently unique pattern of neural and behavioral responsiveness to social decision-making and social feedback compared to past findings for social anxiety.
According to the researchers, their results specify that loneliness is linked to a biased emotional reactivity to adverse events instead of social avoidance.
Their findings, therefore, highlight the uniqueness of loneliness from social anxiety, as well as the need for adjusted psychotherapeutic protocols.
Addressing Social Anxiety
Social anxiety syndrome is extremely common. It's going way beyond shyness. It may be restricted to one-off two specific circumstances, or in all social conditions.
Behavioral treatment, along with desensitization approaches helps such a situation along with prescription drugs, all of which, is under a psychiatrist's supervision.
Frequently, a combination of both is essential to be effective in social circumstances. According to The Times of India, Hippocrates has described social anxiety symptoms in a patient more than 2,000 years ago.
He dared not come in the company for fear he should be disgraced, misused, overshoot himself in gestures or speeches, or be such, he is thinking each man is observing him.
Related information about social anxiety is shown on TEDx Talks' YouTube video below:
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