{
  "id": 485722,
  "title": "Lonely people can feel their heartbeat clearly like everyone else, but their brains respond differently",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/10/lonely-people-can-feel-their-heartbeat-clearly-like-everyone-else-but",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-10T17:20:03.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Medical Xpress",
    "slug": "medical-xpress",
    "url": "https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-lonely-people-heartbeat-brains-differently.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "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.",
  "summary": "A recent study by researchers from Hiroshima University has found that while lonely individuals can detect their heartbeat as accurately as their peers, they interpret and feel about their bodily signals differently. The research, published in Biological Psychology, aimed to explore the link between loneliness and interoception, the brain's capacity to perceive and interpret internal bodily signals such as heartbeats. The study involved 39 healthy young adults who completed questionnaires assessing loneliness and social isolation, body awareness, and depressive symptoms. They then completed two heartbeat tasks and had their resting brain activity recorded using EEG alongside their heart activity using ECG. The findings revealed that lonelier people scored lower in four areas of body awareness: trust, self-regulation, emotional awareness, and freedom. Additionally, they reported feeling less comfortable with and less able to regulate their emotional and bodily experiences, while also showing weaker automatic brain responses to their heartbeats in the frontal regions of the brain. The researchers suggested that this weaker processing could be why loneliness keeps the body locked in a state of high alert or hypervigilance. The study highlights the need to understand the intricacies of loneliness, not just the psychological but biological ones, as chronic loneliness is linked to serious health problems such as high stress, depression, and immune system dysfunction.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}