"Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection" | Ben Rein

We are more isolated from one another than ever before — by our technology, by our political divides, and most of all, by our choices. 

This week on the show, we talk with neuroscientist Ben Rein about why this social isolation is terrible for our health — implicated in not only rising rates of mental illness, but also heart disease, dementia and more.

We discuss Ben's new book, "Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection", published earlier this week, and try to work out a plan for an improved social diet to restore our brains — and our society — to good health.

Learn More:

• Ben Rein's website
• Publisher's website
• References from the book
• Social Journaling template

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Transcript

Nicholas Weiler (00:07):

This is From Our Neurons to Yours, a podcast from the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University, bringing you to the frontiers of brain science. Today, on From our Neurons to Yours, we're looking at what some are calling a public health epidemic, loneliness. According to many experts, rates of isolation have surged in recent years accelerated by COVID, remote work, and the ways technology often substitutes for face-to-face contact. Neuroscientist Ben Rein says, "The consequences go far beyond just feeling disconnected. Loneliness and isolation are profoundly bad for our brains." In his new book, Why Brains Need Friends, he argues that social connection is every bit as essential as sleep, diet, and exercise. He calls it our social diet. And like any diet, when it's lacking, our health suffers. It's a profound idea, one with wide-ranging implications, not least for the political and cultural divisions that feel like they're ripping our national social fabric to shreds. It certainly got me thinking about my own social fabric. So, let's just get right into it.

Ben Rein (01:29):

My name is Ben Rein. I'm a neuroscientist by training. Currently, I am an adjunct lecturer at Stanford. I teach a class called, How to Communicate Science. Outside of Stanford I'm the Chief Science Officer of the Mind Science Foundation based in San Antonio, Texas. We fund research in neuroscience. I'm also an clinical assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo, and I'm an author with a book called, Why Brains Need Friends, published by Penguin Random House.

Nicholas Weiler (01:58):

The first thing I wanted, let's turn to talking about the book. There was something that stuck with me as I was thinking about the book as I read it. You cited early on in the book that a couple of years ago President Biden's Surgeon General Vivek Murphy, announced a public health epidemic of loneliness.

(02:15):

But there's some other pieces. Derek Thompson had a piece in the Atlantic earlier this year that said, "Well, maybe actually the problem is not loneliness, but isolation, and maybe we ought to feel more lonely than we do. We're not feeling lonely, which is what allows us to stay isolated." And then in the book I noticed that the word that you used most often was divided. That we're very divided as a society. I just wanted to hear you talk a little bit about why you use that word divided. Is there good evidence that we are lonely, that we're isolated, that we're divided, and which of those is the biggest issue for our brain health and the health of our society?

Ben Rein (02:54):

Great questions, and I'm really appreciating your read of the book and your insights here, so thank you. Because I didn't really notice that I used the word divided a lot, but I can see now that I did. Yeah, I mean, loneliness and isolation are distinct, right? Loneliness, just to clarify for listeners, loneliness is the state of feeling that you're not getting enough social contact. Isolation is the objective state of being alone. And so, you can be isolated without necessarily being lonely. And as for the data, both are on the rise, and in bad ways. I think from 2013 to 2021, of course 2021, asterisk on that, because it was sort of a COVID-marked year, but the amount of time that people spent alone rose by over 36 hours per month. So, we are objectively becoming much more isolated.

(03:43):

What about loneliness? Well, in 2022, 58% of Americans reported being lonely. So, it's sort of both. And it's an interesting perspective that you raise that we can be isolated, but maybe we're on our phones, or we're watching TV and we're not paying attention to the fact that we're lonely. That is interesting, and that definitely matters, right? There's research showing that both loneliness and isolation are bad for you in generally the same ways, but there are actually some minor differences in the sort of health effects between the two. So, both bad for health and wellbeing, but slightly distinct. And there's certainly obviously this important feature of perception. You come home from a vacation with family, you're so over-socially saturated, you'd never want to speak to anybody again it feels like, and you're isolated, but you are not lonely. Versus you go to a concert, you're surrounded by thousands of people, but you go alone. And so, you are lonely, despite not being isolated.

(04:42):

And that's an interesting context to frame all this in for the average person to think about in their life like, "Which am I, and which is a problem?" Now, as for being divided, I'm very concerned about America right now. I think a lot of people are, and I do feel that we are very divided, because I think there are so many variables contributing to this. Obviously, for me the first one that pops up is political polarization. We have this intense divide in America, and once in a while something happens that really puts a magnifying glass on it, like the Charlie Kirk shooting. On top of that, we also have social media, which may seem like a innocuous force, but it's not.

(05:24):

I published a paper a couple of years ago with this hypothesis I call the virtual disengagement hypothesis, stating that when we interact online and we don't have social cues to read and process and reflect on, there's very little reason that our brains would basically flip the empathy switch and turn on. Because those social cues are what activates the brain areas involved in empathy, like the anterior cingulate cortex and the insular cortex and the prefrontal cortex.

(05:49):

And so, if we're interacting with these kind of text-based people on a place like Twitter, for instance, where we can't see their face, we can't their vocal tone, none of that's there. Why would our brain's empathy systems turn on? And therefore we are much more prone to hostility and aggression online. And of course, there's plenty of evidence there that people are really mean online. The rates of online harassment are really high and climbing.

(06:11):

And so, to me that's another factor about why we're divided, right? I'm very focused on, yes, we are isolated and we are lonely, but is that because we are divided? Are those things really one and the same? And I think that they're all related, but the division is to me arguably the most damaging plague, because when we feel that we don't have this sense of belonging, we feel this gap or this space between ourselves and our community or our species, which can happen a lot, especially when we see these horrible videos online of just terrible things happening and people sort of representing the human race in a very careless and unflattering way. It may make us feel like we don't really belong with these people that we're surrounded with, and I think that's really damaging too. So I mean, I'm truthfully worried about it from all angles.

Nicholas Weiler (07:05):

Your background is in studying empathy and sort of how this works on a biological level from your work with Rob Malenka and others. I thought it was a really interesting observation that you made about the ways that technology allows us to connect with one another tends to strip away some of the signals that we usually use to build empathy with one another. The visual cues, people's expressions, people's reactions. And you had a great story about imagine that you left a tack on the ground 15 years ago and some kid stepped on it five minutes ago. You wouldn't feel empathy for that person, because you weren't there to observe the reaction. I thought this was a really nice metaphor for our social lives online, where we can make a post, we can say something mean, and we never see the response. We never see how it affects the other human being on the other side of the screen.

(08:00):

It seemed like that was sort of where this idea that somehow it's not just that we are isolated, which is bad for us. And that's what I want to get into next. But also that somehow that isolation and the ways in which we are now connecting with each other is twisting our social bonds, is twisting the way that we engage with one another. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seemed like that was one of the things that you were bringing up, like we need to understand what has happened to our social lives in order to understand why things are so ugly out there.

Ben Rein (08:37):

Yeah, I think I have spent a lot of time thinking about the current circumstances we exist in in the context of what neuroscience has revealed, and that has totally transformed the way that I perceive social interaction and our culture. I'm very well aware that the average person, it does not really have the ability to access and read the scientific literature and keep up on it. I try to work on that by making videos accessible online and you as well with this podcast, I think it's awesome. And I think that I wanted to make that information that shaped my perspective available so that the average person, when they go through their daily life and they log on to social media and they start arguing with someone online, or they use Instacart to order their groceries instead of going to the store and interacting with the cashier, all these little tiny things that make up our lives that they would start to view them from this broader perspective of like, "Oh, wait a minute, this is not necessarily good for my health, and then I'm missing out on something."

(09:35):

Because I think for the other core pillars of wellbeing, which you might say are exercise, diet, sleep, people understand the consequences of not eating a healthy diet. People understand and have felt the consequences of not getting a good night's sleep, and a lot of people have also felt the positive consequences of exercising and seeing how different it makes them feel. But I don't think that public understanding on this experiential and biological level is there yet for socializing. We've heard, yeah, loneliness epidemic, it's being isolated is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes. But why, and how do we really think about this isn't just, "Oh, I used to see my friends five hours a week and now I see them one hour a week." It's also all these micro decisions in our daily lives, like ordering on Instacart or using the ATM instead of going to the teller face-to-face, things like that where I view all these things as little tiny ingredients in this broader social diet that is changing, and I think is problematic.

Nicholas Weiler (10:32):

Well, let's dive into that. As the late great Krishna Shenoy used to say, "Things are looking bleak out there, now save us with science." Let's see how science can help us understand some of these problems. What to use is the clear evidence that this isolation that we're seeing, what does that do to our bodies? What does that do to our brains, and why is that something we should be concerned with, even more selfishly than these broad social issues we were talking about a few minutes ago?

Ben Rein (11:02):

So, it's twofold, I think. On one side you have interaction is good for us. We feel better after interacting. There's all sorts of benefits to interacting. And there's a whole biological explanation there of what's good about it. On the other side, isolation is bad for us, and there's a whole biological explanation of that and what's going on there. And those two things are actually not entirely overlapping. There's actually, there's some differences. It's not just that they're two ends of the same spectrum. They both have sort of different effects.

(11:32):

And so, it's important to recognize first off that there's studies, let's say the mortality, risk of death period. In they tracked over 300,000 people for a decade or so, and they found that people who were super isolated were at a 50% higher risk of dying from any cause. So why is that? Well, half of it is that they're super isolated and that's bad for them. And the other half is that the control group that they're comparing with is all made up of people who are connecting regularly. And so they are also reaping the benefits of social connection. So it's not necessarily a fair control group. Because we would ideally be comparing them to people right in the middle who are sort of getting the average amount of interaction.

(12:15):

When it comes to the downsides of isolation, isolation is basically stress. And that's very non-nuanced, non-scientific for me to say. But being isolated activates the body and the brain's stress response systems. It activates the HPA access, it drives cortisol levels up, and that's bad. You don't really want stress. Of course, acute stress when you're stressed for a short period can have positive effects in terms of biologically, it can make you more ready to take on challenges. The immediate response to being stressed is you have reduced inflammation.

Nicholas Weiler (12:47):

Right, you get that adrenaline boost.

Ben Rein (12:49):

Yeah right, heart rate goes up. And there's also some evidence in the brain that short-term stress can increase the membrane expression of NMDA receptors. So, it actually can alter the way neurons are communicating in a way that's actually positive and maybe beneficial for learning and may just sort of enhance cognitive performance.

Nicholas Weiler (13:06):

Interesting. I mean, stress is a signal to get ready. We're going to do something right now. And if that happens in a short period of time for an activity that you need to do in running away from a predator or getting ready for a presentation, that's probably good.

Ben Rein (13:19):

Exactly, yeah. It's your body readying the troops and saying the time for a challenge. Here we go. And actually, the reason why, by the way, isolation is a stressor is because think about it evolutionarily. Long, long time ago we were more likely to survive in groups. We work really well together. And when it comes to survival of the fittest, humans work well in groups. So the most fit humans, we're the most social humans. So when you're cast out from your tribe for whatever reason, you get lost or you get booted out, because you did something inappropriate. At that point, your brain is triggering an alarm response. It's saying this is bad. You being by yourself is a imminent threat to your health and survival. You need to go find your community now. And so in my opinion, that's the reason why isolation does trigger this stress response.

(14:03):

Back then, you either die or you find your community and it's all restored. Nowadays, you think about all these variables that are influencing our interactions. We're spending so much more time alone, 36 more hours per month, that's driving that stress response at a much higher level than maybe a few years prior when we weren't spending as much time alone. So why is that a problem? Well, so in chronic stress, what can happen is I mentioned that cortisol is anti-inflammatory. Again, you have a predator chasing you, you're stressed, cortisol is running through your veins. So it's actually really helpful to suppress inflammation right now, so we can be nimble and quick and escape this predator and be ready to fight whatever we need. But in the long term, what can happen with chronic stress is that cortisol loses its anti-inflammatory properties because the tissues of the body are basically like, okay, enough is enough. We've had cortisol hanging around for all these weeks. We can't just keep suppressing inflammation. We need some inflammation here.

Nicholas Weiler (14:55):

It's the hormone that crying wolf.

Ben Rein (14:57):

Yeah, exactly. So please go away, cortisol, we're going to ignore your signals from now on, and we're going to allow inflammation to return. And so what can happen is, with chronic stress you can see chronic inflammation. There's some evidence that this chronic inflammation may be the sort of culprit in social isolation that's driving all these negative health effects. For example, I mentioned isolated people are at 50% higher risk of death by any cause. Well, that doesn't mean that they're just dropping dead spontaneously. It's capturing cardiac arrest, stroke, all sorts of things. And there's some research in mice showing some really interesting stuff. So this is it by the way, University of Texas, Houston, Louise McCullough's lab. They were doing research on strokes in mice. They would induce a stroke with this very controlled paradigm where they would basically occlude the artery and there would be some period where blood was not flowing to the brain properly.

(15:50):

And you would get a stroke of roughly the exact same magnitude, the exact same stroke basically in all the mice. It's very scientific, very controlled. But what they found is that certain mice were having larger areas of damage in the brain, even though they suffered the exact same stroke, the artery had been blocked for the exact same amount of time. So why were they experiencing more damage in the brain? Well, they looked back and they found that those mice were the ones that were living alone. They were single-housed. So for some reason, these mice being isolated was causing them to suffer more severe strokes.

Nicholas Weiler (16:20):

That's just a wild finding.

Ben Rein (16:22):

Unbelievable.

Nicholas Weiler (16:22):

Simply being alone makes a stroke worse.

Ben Rein (16:26):

Yeah, that's kind of terrifying in my opinion. But why though? Well, they went in and to simplify this complicated science stuff, they basically suppressed immune reactivity. They suppressed inflammation in the brain. And what they found was that when they did that those isolated mice no longer had bigger strokes. It seems like being isolated, maybe driving inflammation in the brain, and then when something happens, when there's some adverse event or some injury like a stroke, the brain is just less resilient. So there were cells kind of like on the cusp of not getting enough oxygen and glucose, because they were starved of blood during the stroke, that maybe normally would have survived. But because of this inflammation sort of interfering with their daily performance and getting in the way of them doing their normal stuff, they died. And so, you had a larger area of stroke.

(17:14):

And you can imagine how this, assuming this is exactly what's happening in humans, because we don't really know. It's hard to do these types of experiments in humans, that's why animal research exists. But you can imagine this sort of same process playing out elsewhere, for example, in the heart, right?

Nicholas Weiler (17:31):

Yeah, I mean, you cited a number of chronic health conditions that seem to be made worse or outcomes are made worse by isolation. And so, it seems like the argument would be that this global effect of chronic stress that's going to act on all kinds of different organ systems. I mean, I think you said seniors who are isolated have higher risk for dementia, for example. I mean, that's something that we think about a lot here at the Neurosciences Institute and Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience. I mean, we've been talking about this. And we've talked about sleep, we've talked about exercise, and as you said, socializing maybe is another thing that we really need to be thinking of as part of our balanced, healthy lifestyle approach. I'd love to move on to talking about some of the benefits of socialization. You mentioned that there's sort of two distinct things we should think about. One, isolation is bad for us. It leads to chronic stress. It's going to exacerbate all kinds of potential chronic disease. What about the flip side? Why is socializing good for our brains, other than just avoiding that chronic stress?

Ben Rein (18:32):

So, first off, there's a ton of mood benefits, which a happy brain is a healthy brain. I guess it's not everything, but it matters. So, the very concise summary of that is that when animals interact and they experience the social reward, this sort of drive to be together, it's because socializing is driving the release of these three neurotransmitters that probably most people will recognize, oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. And what's important about those three is that they're all in some way involved in motivation and positive emotion and reinforcement. And so, basically socializing drives the brain to release neurotransmitters that the brain recognizes as a good thing. And so, we feel better. There's a ton of psychological research showing that people, even introverts feel better after interactions, although with introverts that those benefits sort of peter out after some time. You can't spend too much time socializing, but a short 10-minute interaction will make most people feel better.

Nicholas Weiler (19:30):

Thanks for bringing that up. That was something I wanted to bring up. There's a lot in this book about, "We should all be interacting more. We all need to go out and be friendly." I was like, "This book was written by an extrovert. I can tell."

Ben Rein (19:38):

I know. I know. I wish I had done more shout-outs to introverts.

Nicholas Weiler (19:42):

No, you did. You made the point. But here's the way I thought about it. It's like diet, right? Different people need different diets. We all need to eat a healthy diet, but we all have different metabolisms. What is a healthy diet for you may not be a healthy diet for me, and vice versa, but we all need to have a healthy diet. And so, that's sort of what it sounded like you were saying, we all need to have a healthy social diet, but some people may need more large groups versus one-on-one and so on.

Ben Rein (20:07):

Yeah. Oh, exactly.

Nicholas Weiler (20:08):

Is that sort of where you were coming, where you were going with that?

Ben Rein (20:11):

Yeah, yeah. And it is a lot like a diet. I mean, it's like when you don't eat for a while, or in this analogy, when you don't socialize for a while, you get hungry. You feel lonely, and then you interact. And for some people they might fill up really quick. They might eat a small meal and that might be enough. And if they eat too much, then they feel bad. That's sort of like the introvert. They socialize for a short period, maybe an hour or two. That's plenty. They can go back into being alone.

Nicholas Weiler (20:35):

Contemplative. We like to say contemplative.

Ben Rein (20:37):

Sure, yeah. So, whereas extroverts may require a larger helping of socializing, that it may take more interactions. And then I think the other thing to recognize as well is that once you stop consuming interactions, you spend more time alone, the rate at which someone will get hungry for interaction again may depend on whether they're an introvert or an extrovert. An extrovert may get hungry again and start to feel lonely just a few short hours after leaving friends. Whereas an introvert may go a couple of days without even noticing that they haven't really had an interaction. So, we should all try to understand where we exist on this continuum of introversion to extroversion. And also, I propose this idea of social journaling where I have this template in the book where you can after an interaction fill this out. There's prompts. Who were you with? How did it feel? How late did you say all that? In doing so, you can sort of start to identify what elements of interacting and what cadence of interacting, how frequently I should be interacting to meet my brain's needs? And everyone's needs will be different.

(21:39):

So absolutely, you're right. It was written by an extrovert, and I hope it doesn't disappoint introverts, but the reality is that introverts also require some level of interaction to be meeting their brain's needs. It just may be much less than the average extrovert.

Nicholas Weiler (21:54):

Yeah. Well, thank you for that clarification. I'm sorry I interrupted. You were talking about oxytocin and serotonin and dopamine giving us these social rewards to teach us to go back and do that again, make sure that we're staying socializing. What are some of the ways that that appears to benefit the brain?

Ben Rein (22:10):

Well, I think that when we look at the mood benefits, that's largely going to be our explanation. The fact that interacting with people can drive the release of serotonin in the brain, that's meaningful. And I think also a really, really interesting note is as a person who has a scientist who has studied MDMA, ecstasy, MDMA acts on three neurotransmitters directly, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, mostly on serotonin and dopamine. Oxytocin, the brain's sort of social reward and social bonding chemical acts on serotonin and dopamine. The fact that ecstasy acts on the same brain systems as oxytocin is quite interesting. Because in a very hand wavy sort of way it explains why socializing can make us feel good. Because it's at a much lower level triggering a very similar brain mechanism as taking MDMA, which is to me is kind of revealing about the nature of social interaction. And by the way, MDMA is one of the only drugs that act on that pairing. So, it is thought to be important for those sort of euphoric effects.

Nicholas Weiler (23:14):

And it makes people feel that great sense of connection is one of the reasons why it's a party drug essentially.

Ben Rein (23:21):

Exactly, yeah. And thank you for saying that, because I forgot to mention that. But yeah, that's the other thing too. The fact that MDMA, by acting on those same systems makes us feel socially connected and increases our empathy and all these documented pro-social effects also suggests the importance of those brain systems in just interpersonal connection in general. But the other thing that's important to note about oxytocin, oxytocin is not only a driver of social bonding. Oxytocin also has many of these health benefits. That's really, really fascinating. Also makes sense in the context of an evolutionary viewpoint that when you're falling in love and your body is producing tons of oxytocin to drive that social bonding and it's acting like that social glue, it is in your best interest to be very healthy so that you can successfully reproduce. Reproduction and survival are basically the two hallmarks of a successful species. Can they produce a lot of offspring, and are they going to survive in general?

(24:18):

So, when oxytocin is improving our health overall through all these mechanisms, it's been shown to be anti-inflammatory, it's been shown to be neuroprotective. It supports bone growth. I didn't know this until I read the book that bone cells express oxytocin receptors.

Nicholas Weiler (24:34):

Wow, that is surprising.

Ben Rein (24:35):

Right? Wild. It can also be supported for immune function. It's been linked to sort social anxiety and social stress processing. So, there are all these benefits to oxytocin circulating. The other angle of this that makes a lot of sense is, once you have successfully produced offspring and you are raising the offspring, once again, there's a ton of oxytocin flowing in both of you. And it also may make sense that the reason oxytocin has all these benefits is to keep you healthy so that you can make sure that your kids survive and that you're there to take care of them. You're not going to suffer a heart attack or a stroke or one of those adverse events while in the middle of protecting that child. So, it's not only that isolation is bad, but that socializing itself is also neuroprotective.

Nicholas Weiler (25:15):

I mean, I've always thought about oxytocin, and I think a lot of the research has been on pair bonding and parents and offspring, but oxytocin is also released just when you have a minor social encounter, just when you make a connection with someone, even a stranger.

Ben Rein (25:32):

Yeah, presumably. I mean, as long as it's a positive interaction, of course. The stranger bumps your shoulder and tells you to piss off.

Nicholas Weiler (25:37):

No, probably not.

Ben Rein (25:38):

There's not going to be-

Nicholas Weiler (25:39):

You're going to get different neurochemicals for that.

Ben Rein (25:42):

And even a dog as well though. But dogs, interacting with dogs has been shown to drive oxytocin release beautifully in both the human and the dog.

Nicholas Weiler (25:51):

But I guess my point is that if we're saying having oxytocin is really healthy for you, it helps with bone growth and it helps with wound repair and all these other things, that doesn't necessarily mean, go get married, have kids. It also seems like that's part of the argument about just spending time with people who mean something to you, or going out and seeking out those relationships.

Ben Rein (26:14):

Definitely. Yeah, and I think my read of some of the neurophysiological data out there is that oxytocin seems to be released when we are hoping to form a bond with someone. So, if you are meeting someone new and they could be a potential friend and you're really starting to get along and you're thinking, "Wow, I could really see this person being a long-term presence in my life, they could be a good best friend." That type of situation, more likely in my read of the literature is probably going to be driving more oxytocin release than you pass the bus driver on the way out and say, "Thanks for the safe driving," or something like that. Because you may not see that person ever again, so your brain's not really trying to establish a bond with them.

Nicholas Weiler (26:54):

Okay, that makes sense. There was also this piece about isolation being particularly detrimental in old age. It's a time when people tend to be losing a lot of relationships. If they had family, the family may be more distant, people may be passing away who used to be close connections in their lives. It gets harder and harder to make new social connections as you get older. And in our society we don't have the same kind of extended family structure that integrates across generations that other societies do or that our society might have had in the past. And that that's exactly when a lot of these chronic health issues are coming up. And I just wanted to make that last point there that this is maybe a particular concern for the elders in our society.

Ben Rein (27:42):

There's some really startling data on that, and I'm glad that section sort of impressed an emotion upon you, because I really think it's maybe the greatest unspoken health crisis of our time that we are allowing seniors to spend a lot of time alone, and they do spend a lot of time alone. Because as you mentioned, that period of isolation coincides directly with the highest risk of various health conditions. And so, I mentioned earlier that there's a study showing 50% increased risk of death by any cause in the average population. In people above 65 there's research showing 78% higher risk of death in men, 57% higher risk of death for those who are isolated in women. And in addition to that, of course you mentioned increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, but also those who have dementia and are isolated, their memory declines twice as fast as those who are not isolated.

(28:32):

So, in this sea of science, and all this data, one anecdote doesn't really matter, but I will share an anecdote. I have my grandmother. I'm very fortunate to still have her alive. She's 88. I've seen she's had MRIs done, and when they've compared her brain to her age-matched controls, also in their 80s, her atrophy is worse than 99% of people. So, she has very bad Alzheimer's disease and she spends so much time alone and I feel so sad for her. And I think the way that's manifesting is that she's really struggling with language. It's pretty impressive. She lives alone. She can take care of herself for the most part. She needs a lot of help, but she can dress herself, she can feed herself. But when we tried to sit down and interact with her, which I know is just the number one thing that I wish I could give her, she has such trouble communicating.

(29:23):

And to me, I think about this sort of use it or lose it concept in the brain. She spent all this time alone, and as this atrophy was occurring, the areas that may have been disproportionately affected may have been those areas that she wasn't using. And one of those areas was language production. And now here she is kind of trapped in this brain, in this body where she can take care of herself, she can move around, she's all good, but she can't really communicate. And that really saddens me. And again, it's one anecdote, but for me it's a daily reminder about the importance of interaction in your life.

Nicholas Weiler (29:54):

And bringing it back to pillars of the healthy life we were talking about earlier. It's like exercise. You need to stay strong and stay healthy, and that goes for cognition as well. And socializing is a really great way of keeping all of your faculties engaged.

Ben Rein (30:11):

The other thing about my Bubby as well is that she has always been a huge health nut. She has diabetes and she's always been extremely protective of her diet. It's kind of a running joke that, it's my mom's mom. And so on that side of the family, nobody cooks with salt because they just have always been so healthy. So, my mom's cooking is notoriously not salty, but she's done all this stuff her whole life. She exercised, maintained a careful diet. She understands the importance of sleep, but I don't think she ever learned about the importance of connection. And important to note that the brain is never fully stapled. There's always some level of plasticity, and even social interventions in older people also have, those studies have been done and they have shown benefits as well. So, it's never really too late, but the earlier, the better.

Nicholas Weiler (30:55):

Cb, let's talk about some of the things that we can do, that listeners can do. I mean, we haven't delved too deeply into this. Our technology and society sort of conspires in a way to make it much easier for us to stay alone than I think it ever has been. We have all these conveniences that make it possible, but what we're learning through this conversation and through the book is that's probably ultimately pretty bad for us. What can we do to get out of that trap?

Ben Rein (31:23):

Well, I mentioned in the book, there's a couple of resources, one being this trait extraversion scale where you can sort of figure out how extroverted you are and therefore what your social needs are. There's also the social journaling template, and especially through the social journaling template, I'm hoping that people will become just more sort of introspective and reflective about their social lives and start to think about just at any given time do an assessment. "Well, when was the last time I had an interaction? I'm not really feeling so well today, feeling a bit flat, my mood's a bit sour, maybe interaction is part of the problem." I think people may tend to go to other things. "Well, it's stress at work. I didn't sleep very well last night." But I'm hoping that introspection will start to include, what have your recent social experiences been like? How frequent have they been? Where that dimension of your life, is it giving you what you need?

(32:13):

And in the case that people do identify that I'm not getting enough interaction. And especially if they're identifying that it's not like, "Oh, this last week was not really very social for me." But it's more of like, "Holy cow, looking back at the last six months, I really have not prioritized interaction and I've kind of built this lifestyle. How do I get out of this?"

(32:30):

I think there's two pieces of advice that I would give there. First off, look for all of those things in life that have been conveniently automated. By that I mean, as you were just saying, Nick, that we have so many new clever contraptions and apps that have taken parts of our lives that used to involve interaction and replace them with some sort of digital interface. Like an ATM replacing a teller. Instacart replacing the grocery store. Telemedicine replacing a doctor's visit. Or remote work versus in-person. So, do sort of assessment of your life. And it might not be easy to do in a moment, but progressively as time goes on where you pull out your phone to check something and you're like, oh, you know what? You're going to call someone that you work with. And then you could just go walk over to their office and talk to them, right? Try to restore face-to-face interaction of years past before the digital world became a thing.

(33:22):

And by the way, this is not something that's unique to socializing. We do this all the time. Personally, I will say I'm very guilty of this. I'm getting dressed in the morning, and instead of walking outside, I could just walk out the door and feel the temperature. I will pull out my phone and I will look at the temperature outside. And it's just so easy to fall into the convenience of this magical computer we have in our pockets at all times. So first, look there, what can you restore?

(33:48):

If you also find in addition to that that you're sort of disconnected, maybe your friends have moved on, they've moved different places, whatever it is that you're looking to build more community. I would strongly encourage looking for groups that represent your interests. If you can find a group where you share something in common with all these people, and not only is that going to be sort of very pleasant for your brain, because your brain, human brains basically categorize people as in-group, out-group all the time. And when you give yourself something that you have in common with all these people, you're probably going to be at a much higher likelihood of establishing bonds. Because the first thing you're going to recognize about someone is, "Oh, they have this same hobby as I do." Not you're going to start to interact with them and immediately start thinking about what religion are they, what's their political preference, all these other in-groups, out-groups that we have placed at the forefront of society nowadays.

Nicholas Weiler (34:40):

Yeah, I mean, the one last thing I wanted to mention, one thing I thought was very powerful actually was throughout the book you were highlighting some of the ways we get in our own way. We underestimate how much we'll enjoy conversations. We expect people to turn us down. We assume that conversations will get harder and harder as they go on. And the science you cite suggests that's not true and is a good reminder to take some of those biases into account and say, well, if this is something I need to do for my health, it's probably going to be better than I expect, even if I'm an introvert. It's kind of like going to the gym. You don't always feel like doing it, but you usually feel better afterward.

Ben Rein (35:17):

Yep, exactly. Yeah. And one way that I, it makes sense for me to think about this is, people like what they're good at. If you think about what career you're in, for instance, likelihood is at some point you identified that you were exceptionally good at that relative to other things. And so you pursued that, because being good at things makes us feel good and we want to do things that we're good at. But if you ask people about their social skills, if you ask a group of people, "How do you perform in social settings relative to your peers, do you think you're better than others or better than average? Or do you think you're worse than average?" People will say that they're worse than average. And what's interesting, if you ask them about other things, like ridiculous things, "How good are you at brushing your teeth," things like that, people will say, "Oh, I'm the best at brushing my teeth."

(35:58):

"How good are you at listening to the right amount of music?" "Oh, I'm super good at that. I listen to the right amount of music all the time." So, for some reason we have this sort of negative self-impression of socializing that we often think we're worse than we are. That's a problem, because people like to do what they're good at. They don't like to do things they're bad at. And we often view ourselves as worse at interacting than we really are. And so, I think that's yet another one of those barriers that can easily get in our way. And as you mentioned, there's tons of evidence that we just miscalculate. We think that compliments are going to be perceived as weird when truly people love them, and we think that if we approach a stranger and start talking to them, that they're going to reject us when in reality that never happens.

(36:38):

And we think that people don't like us, or we think that they like us less than they really do. They actually turn out to like us quite a bit. And there's all of these really reproducible phenomena in socializing where we suck at anticipating what's going to happen. And we often do a disservice to ourselves. Because we hold ourselves back from things that would be productive and would be beneficial. So, that's another definitely a key point that I hope people to take away is that try to take your head out of it. And if your heart's telling you, "Hey, I want to talk to that person. They seem like a cool person. Let's chat, or I'll compliment them on their shoes or whatever." You can find a million reasons why that might not go well, but in reality it's probably going to go a lot better than you expect.

Nicholas Weiler (37:17):

Well, that's a great place to end. Thank you so much, Ben, for coming on the show. The book is Why Brains Need Friends. It was a great experience reading it and thinking about it, and it was a great experience talking with you about it, so thank you.

Ben Rein (37:30):

Well, thank you. I really appreciate it, and I hope that your brain's producing some oxytocin and serotonin and dopamine from this.

Nicholas Weiler (37:38):

Thanks again so much to our guest, Ben Rein. His new book is called, Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection. To read more about his work, check out the links in the show notes. And if you're enjoying the show, I would encourage you to subscribe and please share with your friends. That is how we grow as a show and bring more listeners to the frontiers of neuroscience, so we're counting on you. We'd also love to hear from you. Tell us what you love about the show, or what's not working for you in a comment on your favorite podcast platform, or by email at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu. From Our Neurons to Yours is produced by Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios with Sound Design by Mark Bell. I'm Nicholas Weiler. Until next time.