Social connection
"Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard and valued; when they can give and receive without judgement; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship."
Lack of connection, or loneliness, has been linked to inflammation,[6] accelerated aging and cardiovascular health risk,[7] suicide,[8] and all-cause mortality.
Other interpretations of conviviality include the art of living in the company of others; everyday experiences of community cohesion and togetherness in diverse settings; and the capacity of individuals to interact creatively and autonomously with one another and their environment for the satisfaction of their needs.
Instead, Harlow's studies suggested that warmth, comfort, and affection (as perceived from the soft embrace of the cloth mother) are crucial to the mother-child bond, and may be a powerful reward that mammals may seek in and of itself.
[18] In 1995, Roy Baumeister proposed his influential belongingness hypothesis: that human beings have a fundamental drive to form lasting relationships, to belong.
This concept can be applied to the formation of friendships, where an individual may desire social connections, but they may reach a point where they have enough friends and do not seek any more.
The Need to Belong Theory is a primary motivator of human behavior, providing a framework for understanding social relationships as a basic, fundamental need for psychological health and well-being.
Two brain areas that are part of the brain's reward system are also involved in processing social connection and attention to loved ones: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), a region that also responds to safety and inhibits threat responding, and the ventral striatum (VS) and septal area (SA), part of a neural system that is activated by taking care of one's own young.
[1] In 1978, neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp observed that small doses of opiates reduced the distressed cries of puppies that were separated from their mothers.
Thus oxytocin may play a flexible role in relationship maintenance, supporting both the feelings that bring us closer and the distress and instinct to fight for an intimate bond in peril.
[31] A wide range of mammals, including rats, prairie voles, guinea pigs, cattle, sheep, primates, and humans, experience distress and long-term deficits when separated from their parent.
In 1958, John Bowlby observed profound distress and developmental consequences when orphans lacked warmth and love of our first and most important attachments: our parents.
[32] Loss of a parent during childhood was found to lead to altered cortisol and sympathetic nervous system reactivity even a decade later,[33] and affect stress response and vulnerability to conflict as a young adult.
In a meta-analytic review conducted in 2010, results from 308,849 participants across 148 studies found that people with strong social relationships had a 50% greater chance of survival.
As many as 80% of young people under 18 years old, and 40% of adults over the age of 65 report being lonely sometimes, and 15–30% of the general population feel chronic loneliness.
However, chronic inflammation has been tied to atherosclerosis, Type II diabetes, neurodegeneration, and cancer, as well as compromised regulation of inflammatory gene expression by the brain.
One theory is that it may have been evolutionarily adaptive for our immune system to "listen" in to our social world to anticipate the kinds of bacterial or microbial threats we face.
In our evolutionary past, feeling socially isolated may have meant we were separated from our tribe, and therefore more likely to experience physical injury or wounds, requiring an inflammatory response to heal.
On the other hand, feeling connected may have meant we were in relative physical safety of community, but at greater risk of socially transmitted viruses.
[43] Social connection and support have been found to reduce the physiological burden of stress and contribute to health and well-being through several other pathways as well, although there remains a subject of ongoing research.
One way social connection reduces our stress response is by inhibiting activity in our pain and alarm neural systems.
Flexible PNS activity, indexed by vagal tone, helps regulate the heart rate and has been linked to a healthy stress response as well as numerous positive health outcomes.
