ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2022
Behavioral and Neural Dissociation of Social Anxiety and Loneliness.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Loneliness Biases Social Engagement Decisions: Evidence From Value-Based Choice Models.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Automatic speech analysis can predict loneliness.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Association between loneliness and hippocampal responses to dynamic social stimuli in psychotic disorders.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Loneliness in schizophrenia: Just loneliness.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Loneliness is associated with unstable and distorted emotion transition predictions.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- The impact of loneliness on alexithymia among Chinese adolescents: the mediating role of problematic smartphone use and the moderating effect of fear of negative evaluation.BMC public health · 2025Article
- The roles of loneliness and self-control in the association between social avoidance and nomophobia among college students.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The Body Can Balance the Score: Using a Somatic Self-Care Intervention to Support Well-Being and Promote Healing.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The current state and influencing factors of negative social expectations among thyroid cancer patients: a single-center cross-sectional analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Exploring the association between loneliness, work environment, and depressive symptoms: evidence from young Korean workers in the Seoul Metropolitan Area.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Pathways of long-term AI virtual companion app use on users' attachment emotions: a case study of Chinese users.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- [Loneliness in times of global polycrises].Der Nervenarzt · 2024Review
- Loneliness and brain rhythmic activity in resting state: an exploratory report.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- The effect of social anxiety on teenagers' internet addiction: the mediating role of loneliness and coping styles.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Loneliness in the Daily Lives of People With Mood and Psychotic Disorders.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2024Article
- Social Isolation, Brain Food Cue Processing, Eating Behaviors, and Mental Health Symptoms.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Social anxiety and loneliness among older adults: a moderated mediation model.BMC public health · 2024Article
- A brain-tumor neural circuit controls breast cancer progression in mice.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2023Article
- Motivational interviewing-an evidence-based, collaborative, goal-oriented communication approach in lifestyle medicine: A comprehensive review of the literature.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2023Review
- The positive and negative emotion functions related to loneliness: a systematic review of behavioural and neuroimaging studies.Psychoradiology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Loneliness is a public health concern with detrimental effects on physical and mental well-being. Given phenotypical overlaps between loneliness and social anxiety (SA), cognitive-behavioral interventions targeting SA might be adopted to reduce loneliness. However, whether SA and loneliness share the same underlying neurocognitive mechanisms is still an elusive question. The current study aimed at investigating to what extent known behavioral and neural correlates of social avoidance in SA are evident in loneliness. We used a prestratified approach involving 42 (21 females) participants with high loneliness (HL) and 40 (20 females) participants with low loneliness (LL) scores. During fMRI, participants completed a social gambling task to measure the subjective value of engaging in social situations and responses to social feedback. Univariate and multivariate analyses of behavioral and neural data replicated known task effects. However, although HL participants showed increased SA, loneliness was associated with a response pattern clearly distinct from SA. Specifically, contrary to expectations based on SA differences, Bayesian analyses revealed moderate evidence for equal subjective values of engaging in social situations and comparable amygdala responses to social decision-making and striatal responses to positive social feedback in both groups. Moreover, while explorative analyses revealed reduced pleasantness ratings, increased striatal activity, and decreased striatal-hippocampal connectivity in response to negative computer feedback in HL participants, these effects were diminished for negative social feedback. Our findings suggest that, unlike SA, loneliness is not associated with withdrawal from social interactions. Thus, established interventions for SA should be adjusted when targeting loneliness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.