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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2013-09-09
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0hxl03JoA0
when you look out into the world it certainly appears the earth is flat the ground beneath you it's stable and unmoving and stars and sun circled the earth hundreds of years ago elaborate theories were developed based on these common sense observations to explain and predict the reach of the oceans and the moment of celestial bodies when science demonstrated that these common sense observations were allusions and
depicted the earth and the universe in a completely different way people slowly came to accept but the world was not as it seemed scientific measurements and sophisticated calculations have repeatedly demonstrated double we think is intuitive obvious and common sense cannot be trusted to be true for that reason modern science is based on a denial of common sense until apparently it comes to ourselves when science confirms
a particular way of thinking about our mind and behavior are depicted in unusual and new way we turn to be skeptical but such a science is worth while even if possible and instead we fall back on intuition prior beliefs and yes common sense for instance if I told you scientific research has demonstrated that opposites attract would you tell me that we don't need a science that
tells us something we already know but what if I told you that birds of a feather flock together according to scientific research when you say we don't need a science Attala something that we are you know or you may have realized already of course that these both may be self evident truths but they can't both be true and Sir internally inconsistent the science of mind and
behavior is full of such examples self evident truths they both can be true we know for instance that two heads are better than mine and we know that too many cooks spoil the broth the next time you hear science report of some obvious result remember that the opposite result with equally obvious but have just been proven to be wrong it's obvious there were rugged individualists true
true true were born to the most prolonged period of dependency but in their transition to adulthood we achieve autonomy independence we've become kings of the mountain captains of our universe it's easy to think about our brain house deep within a cranial vault separated isolated protected from others when we look out into the social world other individuals individual certainly look distinct independent some facilities with no forces
binding them together no wonder that we forget there were a member of the social species born dependent on our parents for our species to survive these infants must instantly engage their parents in protective behavior and the parents must care another about these offspring to nurture and protect them even once grown we're not perfectly splendid specimens other animals can run faster see and smell better and fight
much more effectively than we can our evolutionary advantage is our brain and our ability to communicate planned realism and work together our survival depends on our collective abilities not on our individual might we are connected across our lifespan to one another through a myriad of invisible forces step light gravity are ubiquitous and powerful after all social species by definition create a merchant structures that extend beyond
an organism structures that range from couples and families to schools and nations and cultures these structures are involved hand in hand with Norrell hormonal and genetic mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behavior help these organisms survive reproduce and leave a genetic legacy to grow to an adult but for social species including humans it's not to become autonomous and solitary it's become the one on
whom others can depend whether we know it or not our brain in biology have been shaped to favor this outcome the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson notes that if you ask people what did the traits of a good person you hear trade such as kind generous compassionate man Patrick if you ask people what the trade seven evil person you hear trade such as cruel greedy exploitive
and selfish said differently the traits of a good person to pick someone who cares about themselves and others an evil person cares about themselves at the expense of others across our biological heritage our brain in biology has been sculpted to incline us towards certain ways of feeling thinking and behaving for instance we have a number of biological machinery set capitalize on adversity signals to motivate us
to act in ways that are essential for survival hunger for instance is triggered by low blood sugar and motivate you to eat an important early warning system for an organism the required much more time and effort to find food then going to the refrigerator door a kitchen cabinet or fast food restaurant first is in a burst of signal that motivates us to search for drinkable water
prior to falling victim to dehydration and paying this in a burst of system then notifies us of potential tissue damage and motivates us to take care of our physical body you might think but the biological warning machinery stops there but there's more although not common sense although not intuitive a pain and a burst of NASA flamingos a feeling isolated from those around you it's also part
of a biological early warning machinery to alert you to threats and damage to your social body which you also need to survive and prosper not just about all of us have felt physical pain and nearly all of us have found the heartbreak of homesickness the agony of bereavement the torment of unrequited love and the pain of being shunned all of these are variations on the experience
of long enough when I started to study the effects of long enough and brain in biology a couple of decades ago loneliness had been characterized as annoying chronic disease without redeeming features it was even equated with shyness and depression with being a loner a person with marginal social skills scientific measurements and sophisticated calculations to our surprise revealed that these were Mets science and common sense had
again produced two very different depictions of a phenomena and yet if you look at the way we are increasingly living our lives it shows the extent to which we still buy ends for those mix of loaning us in values of autonomy and independence for instance if you look at the percent of one person households in nineteen forty across the United States it was largely less than
fifteen percent of the households by state fast forward to nineteen seventy and it's grown to be between fifteen and twenty percent fast forward to two thousand and I now exceeds twenty five percent in most states in America and that light blue state Utah and the two thousand ten census has gone darker blue the prevalence of loneliness is also on the rise in the nineteen eighties scholars
estimated that about twenty percent of Americans felt lonely at any given point in time two recent nationally representative surveys indicate that this number has doubled but you don't hear people talking about feeling lonely and that's because blowing this is stigmatized the psychological equivalent to being a loser in life for a weak person and this is truly unfortunate because it means were more likely to deny feeling
lonely which makes no more sense the denying we feel hunger thirst our pain for living with long enough we now know is a major risk factor for broad based morbidity and mortality consider a couple of the conditions we know about premature death living with their pollution increase your odds of an early death by five percent living with obesity we know a national health problem increases your
odds of an early death by twenty percent excessive alcohol consumption thirty percent a recent meta analysis of over a hundred thousand participants shows that living with slowing us increase your odds of an early death by forty five percent we're not the only social species and an experimental investigations if not Newman social animals who were isolated shows state to suffer deleterious physiological consequences and an abbreviated lifespan
across our history as a species we have survived and prospered by banding together couples families and tribes for mutual protection and assistance we think of long enough as a sad condition but for social species being on the sofa parameters not only sad it is dangerous the brains of social species including our own have a ball to respond to being on the social perimeter by going into
a self preservation mode if you isolate a relevant and then put it in an open field such as this box in the bottom of the image it engages in what's called predator abrasion that walks around the outside in dozen veteran to the middle where escape from a flying predator would be more difficult when you mean still isolated they too alone only in an unhappy circumstance but
in a dangerous circumstance and their brains to snap into a self preservation mode and a brain imaging study that we conducted we showed people negative images that had nothing to do with other people are negative social image while they were sitting in a scanner newly scanning what we found was the lonelier the brain when I was negative social image was presented had is in a person's
environment when something negative socially happened the brain allocated more attention greater visual cortical activity depicted in yellow here to that image that has you follow that image forward you come to those two blue areas that's a temporal parietal junction this is a piece of brain tissue that's involved in theory of mind in mind reading in men's lives hang in taking another person's perspective in empathy it's
responsible for the attentional control required to step out of your head and put yourself at least figuratively inside the head if someone else so you can take their point of view the lonelier the brain when something negative in a social context was depicted the less the activation in this region it's dangerous on the social perimeter when something happens negative in the social environment that brain is
focused on self preservation not a concern of the other person the similarity in rural and be able to affect across fly Ginny is a testament to the importance of the social environment for social species and these deep evolutionary roots tilting our brain in biology toward self preservation also suggests that much of which triggered by social isolation it's non conscious for instance when your feel isolated you
feel this motive this desire this intention to connect with other people again what you don't feel is it your brain has gone into a hyper vigilance for social threats and this hyper vigilance means you introduce attentional confirmatory and even memory biases in terms of those social interactions and if you're looking for dangers you're more likely to see dangers whether they exist or not meaning that you're
more likely to have negative interactions and that threat surveillance of always looking for the next photo activate neurobiological mechanisms that can degrade your health and lead to early mortality long in the sting Chriss defensiveness because you're focused on your own welfare rather than taking the position our perspective of people with whom we interact long and this increases depressive symptoms which has the artifact of decreasing your
likelihood of having social conflict and through the acoustic and postural and facial expressions of sadness such as this child in this picture served as a signal to all others in the vicinity to reconnect with you if they're willing to do so so it's a safe call for connection Loomis increases morning cortisol levels a powerful stress hormone the consequence of the brain's preparation for yet another dangerous
day and long enough increases pre potent responding which means you're more likely to fall victim to a whole host demand healthy impulsive behaviors and the end of the day doesn't bring a man so the brains high alert state if it's dangerous to fend off wild beasts but by yourself with a stick imagine how dangerous it is to lay that stick down at night when predators are
out and you're without that save social surround we've found that loneliness also decreases sleeps liberty increases the number of Michael awakens increases the fragmentation of sleep and thereby decreases the detoxification of stressful days over the course of the night bonus even alters gene expression such as inflammatory banality to deal with assaults not long ago we thought about the jeans is the keyboard on which life song
played out with this research suggests is that if the genes of the keys on the piano then the environment including your social environment is the pianist influencing which keys are turned on and off well if loneliness is dangerous but we do about it when we're hungry we can go to the refrigerator and get a snack we were thirsty we can go to them faucet and draw
a glass of water but when more lonely we have no pantry full of friends with whom we can connect and no online social networking does not replace the comforting touch of a friend first recognize what the signal is and don't deny it second understand what it does to your brain chair body to your behavior it's dangerous as a member of the social species to feel isolated
and our brain snaps into a self preservation mode that brings with it some unwanted an unknown effects on our thoughts and our actions toward others be aware of those understand those of facts and take responsibility for your actions toward others and third respond understanding that it's not the quantity your friends it's the quality of a few relationships that actually matter I tend to put three components
of connectedness one can promote promote intimate connections by developing one individual who's trusted in the home you can and who can confide in you you can promote relational connected spy simply sharing good times with friends and family we often go to the dinner table happy that we've provided for our family but having forgotten the sharing the good times with them in route collective connecting this can
be promoted by becoming a part of something bigger than yourself if the articles to connections seem insurmountable consider volunteering for something that you enjoy perhaps hoping to serve the needy volunteering in a museum a slew a running club or attend accident or simply taking time to speak to elders at a retirement home sharing good times is one of the keys to connection and don't wait the
