Nature Communications, suggests that the brains of people who experience loneliness display specific patterns in a network of regions called the default network.
This network is associated with thinking processes, including the abilities to remember, imagine, and plan for different moments in time.
Participants for this study were around 40,000 individuals from the UK Biobank imaging-genetics cohort, which is an open access biomedical database.
The researchers collected initial data for their study through a self-assessment questionnaire on loneliness, along with genetic and lifestyle factors.