Loneliness and implicit attention to social threat: A high-performance electrical neuroimaging study

Abstract

Prior research has suggested that loneliness is associated with an implicit hypervigilance to social threats—an assumption in line with the evolutionary model of loneliness that indicates feeling socially isolated (or on the social perimeter) leads to increased attention and surveillance of the social world and an unwitting focus on self-preservation. Little is known, however, about the temporal dynamics for social threat (vs. nonsocial threat) in the lonely brains. We used high-density electrical neuroimaging and a behavioral task including social and nonsocial threat (and neutral) pictures to investigate the brain dynamics of implicit processing for social threat vs. nonsocial threat stimuli in lonely participants (N = 10), compared to nonlonely individuals (N = 9). The present study provides evidence that social threat images are differentiated from nonsocial threat stimuli more quickly in the lonely (~116 ms after stimulus onset) than nonlonely (~252 ms after stimulus onset) brains. That speed of threat processing in lonely individuals is in accord with the evolutionary model of loneliness. Brain source estimates expanded these results by suggesting that lonely (but not nonlonely) individuals showed early recruitment of brain areas involved in attention and self-representation.

Keywords:

• Attention
• Chicago electrical neuroimaging analytics (CENA)
• EEG/ERP
• Hypervigilance
• Loneliness
• Perceived social isolation
• Social rejection
• Social threat

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2015.1070136.

Notes

¹ In the present study, the following IAPS pictures were used: Social threat: 2900, 9041Nonsocial threat: 1019, 1033, 1051, 1090, 1110, 1111, 1113Social non-threat: 2579Nonsocial non-threat: 5711, 5720. 7001, 7004, 7080, 7090, 7175

² To determine the evoked microstate(s) prior to 116 ms (and between 212 and 232 ms, which proved to be a transition between microstates), the CENA was performed on the ERP waveform collapsed across stimulus type (since the simple main effect contrast showed no differences as a result of stimulus type). To determine the evoked microstate(s) between 116 and 212 ms and between 232 and 1000 ms, the CENA was performed separately on the ERP waveforms elicited in lonely participants by the social threat stimuli and on the ERP waveforms elicited in lonely participants by the nonsocial threat stimuli.

Additional information

Funding

Support for this research was provided by a grant awarded to JTC by the Department of the Army Award [#W81XWH-11-2-0114] and a grant awarded to MB by (1) the Gilbertson award, University of Central Lancashire and (2) the international research travel grant funded by the School of Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire.