The Effects of Loneliness on the Brain

Loneliness and aspect of this is maybe compensating for lack of social stimulation in all sorts of ways, several of which may involve generating information from the inside. It can be regurgitating past social events, thinking more about future social events, or contemplating possible social events outside of a timeframe. Similar to hunger, it signals that something has gone awry in our lives. Just as hunger motivates us to look for food, loneliness should drive us to seek out connection to others. For our ancestors on the African savannah, whose survival probably depended on having ties to a group, that social impulse might have been a matter of life or death.