Lonely people can feel their heartbeat clearly like everyone else, but their brains respond differently
For a long time, psychologists have described loneliness as the discomfort that comes from wanting more social connection than we feel we have, but there is more nuance to loneliness. Scientists are increasingly finding that loneliness is also linked to how we respond to negative emotions and how sensitive we become to signs of social threat.
Research by scientists at Hiroshima University has shown that lonely individuals may feel their heartbeats distinctly like others, yet their brains process these sensations differently. The study involved young, healthy university students and revealed that while lonelier people detected their heartbeats with the same accuracy, they interpreted and felt these signals in a markedly different way.
Lonelier participants reported feeling less comfortable with and less capable of regulating their emotional and bodily experiences. Their brains showed weaker automatic responses to heartbeats in the frontal regions, which could explain why loneliness often leaves the body in a heightened state of alert or hypervigilance. The findings, published in Biological Psychology, suggest that loneliness may not diminish the ability to sense bodily signals but alters how those signals are perceived and judged.
This shift in body awareness could contribute to feelings of loneliness, though the causal relationship remains unclear.
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