Loneliness hurts. It is psychologically distressing and so physically unhealthy that being lonely increases the likelihood of an earlier death by 26 percent. But psychologists think it hurts so much because, like hunger and thirst, loneliness acts as a biological alarm bell.
On March 26, just as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted a report on bioRxiv. It is the first study in humans to show that both loneliness and hunger share signals deep in a part of the brain that governs very basic impulses for reward and motivation. So, our need to connect is apparently as fundamental as our need to eat.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare brain responses to loneliness and hunger. 40 adult participants underwent a 10-hour session depriving (剥夺) them of food and another 10-hour session denying them social contact. Both sessions served as a control (对照) condition for each other.
The social-isolation condition was challenging to arrange. Some people are lonely in a crowd, while others enjoy solitude To induce(l t)not just objective isolation but subjective feelings of loneliness, the researchers had the participants spend their time from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. in a room at the laboratory without phones, laptops or even novels in case fictional characters provided some social support. Puzzles were allowed, as was preapproved nonfiction reading or writing.
Researchers then focused on a midbrain region called “the substantia nigra”, a center of dopamine (多巴胺) release involved with motivation and desire. The dopaminergic response shows a strong wanting. In the scanner, participants saw images of their preferred forms of social interaction and of their favorite foods, as well as a control image of flowers. It was then found that the substantia nigra responded only to cues of what they had been deprived of. The magnitude of the response correlated with the subjects’ self-reports of how hungry or lonely they were, though the feelings of hunger were consistently stronger.
Finally, the researchers used machine learning to confirm their findings. A software classifier trained to recognize neural patterns during fasting (斋戒) proved able to recognize similar neural patterns from the social-isolation condition even though it had never “seen” them. So there seems to be an underlying shared neural signature between the two states.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, an obvious next question for the work was whether different forms of social media could satisfy the need for social connection. Those researchers were never able to get funding for such a study. But now it seems they will.
24. The report posted on March 26 ________.
A. is based on the social-isolation condition during the pandemic
B. is the first study on the effect of loneliness on human beings
C. reflects the similarity between loneliness and hunger
D. shows human need for reward and motivation
25. What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?
A. Why inducing feelings of loneliness was challenging
B. How loneliness was created among participants
C. Why participants were denied access to phones
D. How researchers compared brain responses
26. We can infer that participants’ substantia nigra showed ________ response(s) to the image of flowers.
A. little B. various
C. strong D. consistent
27. What does the underlined “it” in Paragraph 6 refer to?
A. The neural signature. B. Fasting.
C. Machine learning. D. The classifier.
【答案】
On March 26, just as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted a report on bioRxiv. It is the first study in humans to show that both loneliness and hunger share signals deep in a part of the brain that governs very basic impulses for reward and motivation. So, our need to connect is apparently as fundamental as our need to eat.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare brain responses to loneliness and hunger. 40 adult participants underwent a 10-hour session depriving (剥夺) them of food and another 10-hour session denying them social contact. Both sessions served as a control (对照) condition for each other.
The social-isolation condition was challenging to arrange. Some people are lonely in a crowd, while others enjoy solitude To induce(l t)not just objective isolation but subjective feelings of loneliness, the researchers had the participants spend their time from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. in a room at the laboratory without phones, laptops or even novels in case fictional characters provided some social support. Puzzles were allowed, as was preapproved nonfiction reading or writing.
Researchers then focused on a midbrain region called “the substantia nigra”, a center of dopamine (多巴胺) release involved with motivation and desire. The dopaminergic response shows a strong wanting. In the scanner, participants saw images of their preferred forms of social interaction and of their favorite foods, as well as a control image of flowers. It was then found that the substantia nigra responded only to cues of what they had been deprived of. The magnitude of the response correlated with the subjects’ self-reports of how hungry or lonely they were, though the feelings of hunger were consistently stronger.
Finally, the researchers used machine learning to confirm their findings. A software classifier trained to recognize neural patterns during fasting (斋戒) proved able to recognize similar neural patterns from the social-isolation condition even though it had never “seen” them. So there seems to be an underlying shared neural signature between the two states.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, an obvious next question for the work was whether different forms of social media could satisfy the need for social connection. Those researchers were never able to get funding for such a study. But now it seems they will.
24. The report posted on March 26 ________.
A. is based on the social-isolation condition during the pandemic
B. is the first study on the effect of loneliness on human beings
C. reflects the similarity between loneliness and hunger
D. shows human need for reward and motivation
25. What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?
A. Why inducing feelings of loneliness was challenging
B. How loneliness was created among participants
C. Why participants were denied access to phones
D. How researchers compared brain responses
26. We can infer that participants’ substantia nigra showed ________ response(s) to the image of flowers.
A. little B. various
C. strong D. consistent
27. What does the underlined “it” in Paragraph 6 refer to?
A. The neural signature. B. Fasting.
C. Machine learning. D. The classifier.
【答案】
苏19057182-3号