Are you looking for a snack or do you just want to spoon?

New research suggests that loneliness and hunger activate the same region of the brain.

Nibblish? You could just be lonely. A new study by neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in November, suggests that our need to socialise is so fundamental, that images of people socialising, shown to people who had spent a day in total isolation, lit up the same region of the brain activated when someone who hasn’t eaten all day sees pictures of food.

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“Both activities — eating and socialising — trigger the release of dopamine,” says psychologist Devanshi Jalan. Dopamine is the pleasure hormone. It’s why we eat when we’re sad, to feel better. And the release of dopamine caused by social contact is the reason you have a bit of a happy high after you’ve talked to a friend on the phone, or met them for coffee.

The MIT study was conducted in 2018 and 2019, as an attempt to locate the nucleus of loneliness. A team of neuroscientists led by Rebecca Saxe, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the institute, collected data from a test group of 40 participants aged 18 to 40.

They participants were first asked to fast for 10 hours, at the end of which they were shown images of their favourite foods (pizza and chocolate cake were the top picks) while undergoing an MRI scan.

In a second round, on a different day, the same participants were barred from social interaction in person or via a device, for 10 hours, and confined to a windowless room. They were then shown images of people laughing together or playing a sport, while once again undergoing an MRI scan.

The scans showed that a tiny region in the centre of the brain called the substantia nigra was involved in generating the sense of craving for both food and social interaction.

“People who are forced to be isolated crave social interactions similarly to the way a hungry person craves food. Our finding fits the intuitive idea that positive social interactions are a basic human need, and acute loneliness is an aversive state that motivates people to repair what is lacking, similar to hunger,” Saxe says, in an article on the MIT website.

The study found that people’s responses to the isolation varied depending on their regular levels of social interaction. Cravings were weaker among those who had lived alone prior to the study than among those with a more active social life.

“These results give meaning to what numerous people are going through right now, interacting in ways they haven’t before, socially isolating, forgoing in-person interactions amid the pandemic. A question to ask now is how much, and what kinds, of positive social interaction are a prerequisite,” Jalan says. “While loneliness might be similar to hunger, fixing it isn’t as easy. Researchers are also studying whether virtual interactions can help satisfy our social cravings, since we may still use virtual media for work and large social gatherings for a while.”