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When we talk about social interactions, there's three components that are important.
Reward and motivation.
You get a gold star for saying dopamine.
Stress responses.
And social cognition.
What often happens when you isolate animals or humans.
You see a lot of stress features get kicked up because it's stressful to be alone.
And you also see an attempt to find reward.
So there's this sort of like motivational component to when I'm alone, I need to not be alone.
And I know there's always going to be people who are like, I like being alone.
Leave me alone.
Generally speaking, Being socially isolated and loneliness actually poses risk factors for mental health and also for physical health.
In the past 20 years, social engagement in general has taken a dive.
Internet, social media.
But this was all exacerbated by COVID-19, where there was an even greater decrease in the size of people's social network.
And this leads to an increase in loneliness.
Even perceived social isolation can lead to things like poor decision making, avoiding future social contact, increased substance use, which can be a damage to your health and also to other relationships, which promotes further isolation.
It seems that we have what's referred to as a homeostatic need for social contact that is likely modulated by dopamine and this reward system.
It's built into us to have it feel good when we connect with other people.
An earlier mortality rate is associated with a lot of these things that we see surrounding loneliness.
In older age.
It shows that the longevity of anyone is increased drastically by the strength of their social connections.
We thrive when this aspect of our neurological makeup is stimulated and supported.
And we don't just thrive in terms of brain health.
We thrive in terms of our whole body.
And yeah, our spirit as well.
Our emotional place.
Us feeling we're connected and we belong.
That's what social connection does.
That's what keeps you young.
It's Mayim Bialik's Breakdown.
She's gonna break it down for you.
Because you know she knows a thing or two.
So now she's gonna break down.
It's a breakdown.
She's gonna break it down.
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
I'm Jonathan Cohen.
And welcome to our breakdown.
This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to.
Today's all about connection.
Let's connect.
We got a question from someone asking us to review some of the aspects of an episode we did with David Rico.
Who's David Rico, Mayim?
David Rico is a therapist who... We love a therapist.
We do love a therapist who did a tremendous amount of his research and work at Esalen back in the day.
What's Esalen, Mayim?
Esalen is a center in Northern California that's known for very... All the hippies go there.
Well, it's known for very progressive psychology research.
Way out there.
Well, not necessarily way out there, but it's a place that is open to modalities like somatic work and things that used to be considered kind of fringe aspects of psychotherapy, which are now in many cases standard for psychotherapy.
It used to be way out there.
Then it got incorporated into mainstream.
That's right, and now it's old news.
Now instead of being way out there, they're like, oh, you were ahead of your time.
Right, so David Rico taught there and actually just had a very interesting path.
He wanted to be a priest and he ended up doing work really about how we connect.
David Rico wrote books like How to Be an Adult in Relationships.
Very important for connection because if you're connecting from your kid parts, you may be not showing up the way you want to.
When the Past is Present is one of his books.
He's written a lot of books.
It's hard to actually find all the titles.
Five Things We Cannot Change, Triggers, Daring to Trust.
He is actually one of the foremost experts on human connection and how to be in a relationship that works.
He identified what was called the five A's and that's what this question was that came to us.
The question came from Gen X Biatch on YouTube.
How can a child who has never received the five A's learn to navigate life?
Was that that user's given name?
No, that's just what I call them.
Okay.
If you've never received the five A's which David Rico talks about as being very important for you to maintain and have healthy attachment and healthy connection with others.
How do you navigate life?
So I don't know that I can answer that question today, but what we're going to do is a little bit of a dive into what's actually going on in the brain when we do connect.
So you're suggesting that there is a list.
We love a list.
Yep.
And it's not that people just don't connect.
It's like fundamentally growing up we can receive these things on this list and we will be better at connecting than if we don't receive these things on the list.
Well, I think I don't want to say better at connecting, because that feels like we're ranking people, but I think the notion that for some people it comes easier than others and understanding David Rico's work is one of the ways that we can learn how to be an adult in relationships and identify where connections maybe didn't happen and where we might have a tendency to not be able to pursue them.
Amazing.
If you're listening at home, you can...
Make a little note.
See how many of these you have received.
Let's look at the list.
Number one thing.
Attention.
Attention.
If you've received attention.
So what does attention look like when you're a child?
It looks like when you need something, someone is there to receive that need.
It doesn't mean you always get it, but having someone pay attention to your needs is And this can even be something that you may not even have memory of when you're pre-verbal.
Were your caregivers distracted?
Were they needing to take care of their own needs so much that you didn't get the attention you needed?
So it doesn't just mean praise.
Praise is actually a very controversial topic in parenting circles, meaning attention is not just about positive praise.
It's about knowing that someone's there for you.
That's what getting attention is.
Number two, acceptance.
Acceptance.
Feeling that your caregivers and I'm using caregivers, you know it could be your parents could be whoever took care of you, could be a nanny, could be a grandma, a grandpa.
Feeling accepted, like... you see me the way I am and that's okay.
I don't have to change to make you comfortable.
If this is sounding foreign to you, you're not alone.
But that's what the notion of acceptance is, feeling accepted.
If you're different, if you have different physical abilities, different cognitive abilities, if you don't fit, let's say, the designated sex or gender that culture has assigned you.
You want to be accepted the way you are.
You want to feel that you're okay the way you are.
That's what acceptance is.
And of course, these are all on a scale.
It's not... necessarily everything about you is accepted all the time.
Did you get any of it?
Sure.
Any acceptance.
That's what we're looking for.
They're actually much more aware now that comparing children to one another within a family sets up a dynamic where no one feels accepted.
Well, all of these things get more complicated in a family dynamic.
For example, in attention, is there one member of the family who needs more attention than others?
It could be a child.
Because they're the most special?
Well, it could be they're the most special.
It could be they have the highest needs.
It could be that they're just better at everything.
It could be, but we don't need to talk about your childhood.
But yeah, attention gets divided once there's more than one child.
And you know sometimes children who are easier, or you know they say sometimes there's a more congruent match between children and parents.
And I'm sure if you're part of a family, you experienced it.
Even if you're an only child, you know, sometimes you just like relate better to one parent.
That can be more of what we call like a congruent match.
There's more congruency, which means it's easier, easier to accept that kid or, you know.
That's the parent that lets you do whatever you want.
Number three, appreciation.
Appreciation.
You know, what that looks like is I'm a valued member of this family, right?
Or I'm a valued member of this relationship.
These things don't only occur in a child and caregiver situation.
These are also things, you know, sorry, we should have said that.
These are things you need in any relationship you have.
Friendship, romance, even work relationships.
But it starts, obviously, in the home.
So appreciation means there are things about you that are unique and they're appreciated.
They're valued.
And that's expressed.
You know, a lot of times...
As adults, we sometimes say to parents, like, you never told me I was good.
And a lot of parents will say, I thought you knew, right?
This is what it is, being able to say, I appreciate what you do.
A lot of families who bless their children on Friday nights in Jewish homes.
A lot of people will whisper something to each child that they appreciate about them, that they did that week.
What did you whisper to your kids?
I often do something funny because they feel very self-conscious, especially when we're around other people on a Friday night.
For me, to you know, bless them.
They have to stand and now they're taller than me.
So a lot of times it'll be something funny like you didn't annoy your brother to the point that he hit you this week.
But it is an opportunity.
You know, how do you build that in to any relationship?
How do you, I don't know, have I told you I appreciate you today?
Not today.
Can I sign up for the Friday blessing?
If you want to sign up for the Friday blessing, send us a message on Instagram.
We're going to start a Friday blessing WhatsApp group.
Who knows?
We're going to figure it out.
Number four is allowing.
Allowing.
I allow you to explain what this next one is.
Yeah, so the notion of allowing is a sense of freedom, you know, being given space to be, allowed to be yourself.
This kind of has overlapped for me with acceptance.
But allowing is also the notion that I can try new things and that's not threatening to you.
Hmm.
Anyone grow up in a home where if you went outside the bounds of what the family established, it was like nope, don't get too excited.
Don't get too this.
Don't wander there.
Don't run with a knife in your hand.
Or why would you want to do that?
That's not something you like.
Right.
Being allowed to succeed also has inherent in it being allowed to fail.
You know, to experience things.
I was given an assignment by a mentor of mine this week.
She wants me to tell her what I fail at this week, not in a self-deprecating way, but what did I try and do?
That was a lesson you know.
So being allowed to do that.
Not that we talk about business on this podcast, but failing quickly is an essential part of trying something new.
I fail quickly all the time.
Sometimes I feel slowly.
Number five, affection.
You know, you'd think this was kind of easy.
Overlap with attention-ish?
No.
Yes.
I mean, if you're receiving affection, it means someone's paying attention.
Someone acknowledges you exist.
But not always, because if you're given affection in a way that feels haphazard, that feels misdirected, that feels manipulative inappropriate, that is a disruption to you know, affection and obviously, attention.
Affection is a very important part of well of life for humans, but more generally speaking, it's it's incredibly important for all primates.
You know, Google your favorite primate if humans, not it.
Um, it's actually very important for all mammals.
So anything that, um, you know, that has a live birth, right.
And nurses, it's young.
Um, go ahead and think of a whale.
Have you ever seen a sea lion sneeze?
That's amazing.
Yes, but that's not affection.
But if you've ever seen a sea lion and its pup... Sneezing.
No.
It looks a lot like a lot of other mammals.
Even whales, you see physical attention that typically moms pay to their babies.
So affection is not just... a way that you know that you matter, it's actually critical.
And we'll get into this probably a little bit when we talk a little bit more about the science here.
But it's actually necessary for the development of all the brain structures that subserve the way that we know that we matter and feel connected to other people.
And inappropriate affection can really disrupt that system.
Lack of affection can disrupt that system.
We've talked about these horrible accidental experiments when children have been left in orphanages without any affection or stimulation or attention.
And the you know the significant and harrowing impact on the ability to attach.
You know, even when rescued from that situation,
So those are the five A's.
So what you're saying in those experiments is that without these informative years it makes connection and attachment, if not impossible much, much harder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was speaking specifically about you know like touch, you know the importance of touch and attention that way.
But yeah, the notion is, you know, there's a lot of silent ways that we can show that there's been damage.
Meaning, you know, sometimes it's very clear if someone can't be touched, won't be touched.
You know, if you've ever gone to, you know we went to an adoption center.
Just we were looking at those dogs and you can tell the ones that have been hurt and are afraid of people.
Right.
You can see that in in in humans as well.
And, you know, that's a trauma response.
Right.
And all most animals, all animals have the ability to exhibit that.
I mean, I had a bird for 12 years, you know, and you could definitely tell when there was fear, you know, and we'd take her to the vet and things like that.
So so it's not just mammals, you know, that experience that.
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So these five A's, you know.
To go back to the original question, you know, if you don't have those and no one has them perfectly,
I think that's also important.
Very few people, and that's not to say that there are no good parents or no good relationships, but as humans, we struggle.
And, you know, these are ideal categories that we want to try and hit.
So how can you navigate, you know, without these things?
I mean, I think David Rico's book, How to Be an Adult in Relationships, is an excellent place to start because it literally goes through each of these A's, talks about what it looks like, what it could look like for you, and how to sort of literally actively repair that.
And there's really great exercises in that book, and we talked about that here.
Also, my Bialik's Breakdown episode with David Rico is a fantastic place to start.
That's really good because we cover a lot of the basics.
What Jonathan and I thought might be helpful to do today is to actually break down what is connection.
What is social connection?
When we talk about our social world, what matters about it and what is the brain actually doing and why, when we connect with people or when we don't connect?
So I want to give a shout out to a really fantastic large review article that was published in Neuron in the end of 2023.
And the title is Characterizing the Mechanisms of Social Connection.
So I'm kind of basing our conversation off that.
I want to give credit where it's due.
It's Delgado, Ferrari, and Chang are the authors.
And it's a beautiful, very long, very detailed summary of a variety of different categories of social connection.
And we wanted to highlight some of them today.
So when we think about our social world, why do we socialize?
Jonathan, what are some reasons we socialize?
To try to get some of the five A's.
Great.
So to form relationships and forming relationships.
So you can do two things with relationships.
You can form them and you can maintain them.
So anyone who knows what it's like to be charismatic on a first, second and third date knows that's building a relationship.
It's what happens from date four on that's actually maintaining it.
That can be hard for people.
I mean, also, my answer is a little bit sarcastic.
Like, we have fundamental drives to maintain connection for survival.
Correct.
Band resources together, hunt and gather together, food defense.
You're much more likely to get picked off if you're not part of a group.
You want to procreate and pass your genes on.
It's as if you prepared for this episode.
So, in terms of social connection right, it's a way to establish relationships, to maintain relationships, also to learn about others, right.
Because we learn about ourselves and we learn about others.
That's just a thing that happens.
But Jonathan hits on a really important component.
When we connect socially, it's actually a way to reduce uncertainty about future interactions.
That's sort of the scientific technical phrasing for what you said.
So there's a social reward that's involved with having relationships.
It's kind of why we have them.
And yes, it's fun and it's nice and sex feels good and so does cuddling and holding hands.
Who else is going to send you the funny GIFs?
And it's nice to get funny gifts.
But there's a social reward that is built in to this system so that we can essentially maximize our survival.
So some of the things that happen in social reward is that you feel like you belong, right?
You don't want to make the Instacart order by yourself.
That's right.
But what's incredibly important to understand is that you actually maximize your physical wellness, your mental wellness and, some might say, your spiritual wellness, right.
Your emotional wellness. you know, wherewithal.
So those things are also improved by being in social interactions.
Now, Jonathan gives a really simple example, like you don't want to hunt alone on the prairie.
You just don't.
It's not going to go well.
You can hunt a bunny.
Even that you might want a friend for.
But in terms of when we think about survival, you don't want to hunt alone.
What's another thing you don't want to do alone?
You know, sleep?
No, it's not sleep.
What are you looking for?
Raise children.
Oh, yeah.
You don't want to do that.
No one.
No other primate.
Does what we do.
And we're not saying that all the single people out there who decide to have children are No, but what a lot of single people do is they have a support network.
And even when people choose to have a child, we hope that they have friends, you know, family members, someone extended
But the notion that human beings, even for people who don't couple up, the notion that we're going to put you and a baby in a room alone and see what happens,
You're going to lose.
You're going to lose.
It's never been the way that primates do it.
So the notion that we need to be together and sleep.
Even only two people raising a baby is not a good idea.
It's kind of a mess.
Well, especially if those two people are of opposite gender, meaning typically females would group together with like-minded primates.
Mm. who typically are female.
Sometimes there was always that one dude chimpanzee in the documentary who was like I hang with the ladies.
And good for him.
He was very helpful.
He held the baby.
He picked some berries.
There's always that one dude.
Just some people like to sleep alone, and that's a thing.
But evolutionarily, yes, sleeping alone is very, very vulnerable.
It's like the best way to be picked off by a predator.
Unless you're indoors and then it's a little safer these days.
This is why Jonathan likes to sleep alone.
And look, there's a lot of scientific research that sharing a bed actually decreases your restorative sleep time, because when someone else pulls the covers off of you or turns in bed,
Jonathan is the exception to every primate rule.
There's a lot of disruption.
Quick anecdote.
My son's mom and I did not have any help.
We were in Los Angeles by ourselves.
I thought you meant we were sleeping.
I was like, it's usually kind of just happens.
And we raised our son for like the first four years without babysitters.
That was not the best idea for our sanity.
That was very, very, very difficult.
You needed that chimpanzee dude who was like, I'll take a shift.
No one wants my sperm, so I'll hang out here.
We needed that neighbor.
So the topic of connection has always been important, but there's kind of two recent things that have happened.
And by recent, I mean in our generation.
There's two recent things that have happened that have drawn a bit of attention.
I mean, the internet.
Are we going there?
I mean, social media.
I think, you know.
That is not social connection.
Okay.
Dr. Cohen has spoken.
Right.
This is an incredibly important topic because there's been this trend to look in our you know, in our phones, more than we look at other humans.
And for young people, it's, it's an epidemic.
It's observational.
It's comparative.
It.
You know people talk about it like it's the popcorn of social connection, where what we're really craving is rich, nutrient dense meals.
Well, our brains actually are craving nutrient-dense meals, but we're kind of being, you know, mainlined popcorn.
Yeah, so we're all nutrient deficient.
And many of us are allergic to popcorn and we just don't know it.
It's upsetting our tummies.
But anyway it's not a bad metaphor, you know, for for social media and and the internet um, you know, kind of shifting the way we interact.
And the other thing that happened recently was there was a global pandemic, and i think we forget.
I don't forget because every time i sit in this room i remember us saying we're doing this podcast because everybody's isolated and there's a global pandemic and we don't even know what's going to happen and there's no vaccine.
It was terrifying and it led to a tremendous amount of isolation.
And some of it was, we are now finding out, possibly more detrimental in terms of social development, especially for young people, than it was helpful.
This is not a place to discuss that politically, but we basically did an experiment on ourselves in terms of social connection and interaction that we're now seeing the impacts of.
There are a lot of emerging studies that are saying that children, especially the younger ones, are developmentally behind.
Their grade levels are not up to what the expectation was.
They're out of their minds, kids who were locked up.
I mean, yeah, kids, teenagers.
Still having fairly significant impacts.
And let's talk again about what's going on in the brain.
So there's three kind of components when we talk about social interactions.
There's three components that are important.
We've touched on them a little bit.
I just want to go over them briefly.
I like another list.
Well, this is a quick list.
The three kind of processes that are involved in the kind of connection we're talking about.
So Jonathan mentioned reward, you know, reward systems, motivational systems.
What do we get? from having social interactions, right?
And we know that there's a reward motivation system already in the brain.
So the question is is that involved here with social interaction the way we know?
It's involved with reward and motivation.
There's also stress-related responses, right?
What's it like to be isolated?
It typically brings up stress, and there's a whole bunch of research, often with animals.
I'm just going to preface that.
But we know what the brain is doing in stress.
Is that the system that's being recruited when we talk about social connections and stress?
And finally...
Social cognition and the processes of the brain that we know are established for us to understand what other people are doing thinking, how they're behaving.
We know what those structures look like from a ton of other research.
How does it connect to social connection per se?
Give us the three again.
The three are reward and motivation.
So we know that circuit.
If you're paying attention, you get a gold star for saying dopamine.
She's going to talk about dopamine.
And I am.
So reward and motivation. stress responses, right?
Because things that come up in social interactions, especially when you're deprived of them, are stress responses and social cognition.
What do we know about what the brain knows about how to interact socially?
So those are the kind of three categories that we know already exist in the brain.
How do they connect to the notion of social connection?
So what we're saying is that when we have a social connection or when we don't, these three systems of the brain are are impacted.
You're either getting something or you're not getting something.
Right.
So I'm approaching it from the position of.
We know that there are systems in the brain that govern reward and motivation.
We know there are systems and links and connections and we'll talk about them that govern stress responses.
And we know that there are systems in the brain that are in charge of social cognition.
Do those relate to the kind of social interactions and social connections we're talking about?
That's what we're going to be talking about today.
We know that the brain is wired to understand reward and punishment and motivation, right?
We know that exists.
Carrot or the stick.
That's right, the carrot or the stick.
We know that the brain regulates stress responses.
And we know that the brain regulates how we interact socially.
The question is how do these systems relate to whether I am able to connect with another human being as a social person?
Let's explore.
So I just want to mention the brain structures that are involved in these three different pathways.
So reward and motivation is the striatum, which is like the largest, the largest region of the basal ganglia.
So like in the middle and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
So prefrontal cortex is this part in front.
It's the special part that we quote higher primates possess.
And ventromedial just has to do with which region it's ventral and medial.
The stress pathways are amygdala, which we've talked about here, that modulates fear anxiety, and the hypothalamus, which processes a lot of different aspects of our human experience, physiological in particular, but also emotional.
And then the social network is medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction.
That's the junction of the temporal lobe, which is the one that lays this way, and the parietal lobe, which lays this way.
Those are the three anatomical categories that we're gonna look at.
So let's talk first about social isolation.
So we're talking about social connection.
Let's talk about what happens when we're isolated.
What often happens when you isolate animals or humans is you see a lot of stress features get kicked up right.
Because it's stressful to be alone.
And you also see an attempt to find reward.
So there's this sort of like motivational component to when I'm alone, I need to not be alone.
What are the things I can do to not be alone?
Or to think you're not alone.
Yeah.
True.
So this is kind of an indication of you know, if you think about what it means as a human.
It means that and I know there's always going to be people who are like I like being alone, leave me alone.
But what we know is that, generally speaking, being socially isolated and loneliness is actually poses risk factors for health right.
For mental health and also for physical health.
So there's all this incredible research that was done and, especially because of COVID, all this research is continuing to be done to see sort of what happened.
In the past 20 years, Social engagement in general has taken a dive because of the things that we talked about internet, social media.
But this was all exacerbated by COVID-19, where there was an even greater decrease in the size of people's social network right.
And this leads to an increase in loneliness.
USA Today, Americans are lonely and it's killing them.
How the U.S. can combat this new epidemic.
It is something to think about.
And even perceived social isolation can lead to things like and this article talks about it poor decision-making, avoiding future social contact, meaning a fear of social contact resulting from lack of social contact.
Increased substance use, which can be a damage to your health and also to other relationships, which promotes further isolation.
They talk about loneliness being worse than smoking.
I can't speak to that because I'm not looking at the stats.
But yes, an earlier mortality rate is associated with a lot of these things that we see surrounding loneliness.
It seems that we have what's referred to as a homeostatic need for social contact that is likely modulated by dopamine and this reward system.
It's built into us to have it feel good when we connect with other people.
So anyone who guessed that I was going to mention dopamine, again, you get a gold star.
There are a lot of examples of of animal research, like I said, in particular, where you see there's a mice study where you see them seeking, really actively seeking out novel social interactions after they've been deprived of social interactions.
And that's associated with an increase in dopamine neurons, specifically in the dorsal raphe nucleus, which is really fun to try and dissect.
But there's not much more I can say about it except it's got a concentration of dopaminergic neurons.
Also the amygdala that we've talked about.
There is research showing that if you activate the amygdala, you'll get this release and it's a specific activation, not just like scaring mice, but that might happen.
That kind of activation of neurons that are GABAergic, which is usually more of a downer of a neurotransmitter, can drive dopaminergic release in the ventral striatum, which is just a region of the striatum that's ventral, which promotes affiliative behaviors.
And this is actually something that's in the title of my thesis that people are always like what's an affiliative behavior.
The desire to be around others, which can look like grooming.
It can look like cuddling.
It can look like all sorts of things depending on the animal.
Not the bad type of grooming.
Not the bad type of grooming.
The good type of grooming.
In addition, you know how sometimes, when you've fasted if you've ever fasted some people fast for religious reasons or just for, I don't know dietary, nutritional reasons.
Sometimes you have a craving for food, right?
A specific craving.
It seems that there's an equivalent for socialization.
There's a social craving that can happen when you're properly, you know, cued.
And craving for food and social contact can occur with the same system of the brain, right?
And that's dopaminergically regulated as well, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone but the notion that it's not the food you're craving and it's not the social interaction you're craving it's that the brain is wired for craving.
It's wired to want something, to get a reward, and that is governed by dopamine.
So how does knowing this change what we should be doing, or change how we understand what our motivations are that are driving us?
Well, I think, for me, what this highlights and this is just one point for me, what this highlights is that, even when we're feeling lonely, even when we may actually be lonely, it's important to know there are behaviors that we can do which can get us hopefully, back on track to some extent because ultimately, our brains are wired for social connection and they're wired for it in a way that should feel rewarding.
It should feel positive and it will then have positive impacts on your physical wellness and your mental wellness.
What I hear also is that Everybody hurts sometimes.
Everybody cries.
What I also hear is that, when we are hurting, further isolation which can be our tendency takes us and creates a momentum that pushes us more into loneliness.
Correct.
More into isolation.
And what I think a lot of people don't realize is that the state that they find themselves in depending on how they choose to respond to that state.
You know, contrary action versus what's the opposite of contrary action.
Non-contrary action?
Great.
I thought there may be a better word for it.
Oh, no.
Yeah, no.
So, like either I'm going against the state that I'm in or I'm accepting and reinforcing, I think is the word I'm looking for the state that I'm in.
That creates a momentum that is programming the brain.
The brain becomes more socially isolated.
And the positive impacts that we're looking for become harder to get.
So, for example...
Feeling lonely.
You can search for that dopamine hit by looking online, but you're probably going to have empty calories.
You're not going to actually get the connection you're searching for.
Texting is slightly better, but also not great.
And actually picking up the phone, which may be the hardest thing to do when you feel really lonely because you may not know who's around to call or you may not think that, like making a call to anyone is better than staying in that isolated state.
Well, and the fact is, even being around people if you don't feel like interacting can actually be healthy as well.
Go sit outside at a park or a coffee shop.
I mean, don't be that creepy person alone outside a park.
But yes.
Not a kid's park.
Maybe go to an adult park.
The Duck Pond.
Oh, got it.
Go to, great.
Being around people.
Anywhere, go sit at, get a meal out and be around other human beings.
And anytime you also can be in nature.
I mean, this came up, you know, a lot in this, you know, giant review paper.
Anytime you can be in, they call it naturalistic settings.
Anytime you can be in a more natural setting.
You know, we know there's so many positive benefits of that.
So also, you know, there's many things that happen when you're able to physically get out of your space.
If you're able to get out of your space,
So that's the first point.
The other thing I wanted to mention is there's been in terms of the stress response remember we talked about the brain has this kind of stress component, and how does that play into deprivation of social connection or a desire for social connection?
One of the regions important is what's called the default mode network.
And we actually talked about this in our South by talk.
The default mode network is typically defined called a task negative network, meaning it's what happens when you're kind of at baseline.
You know what connectivity is happening when you're resting right.
However, there's been some really interesting research in terms of the default mode network in depression and that this network gets reinforced in ways that some of our baseline you know what we kind of colloquially call the default, like my default mode right is ruminating that that can be kind of overactive in depression.
And so loneliness and depression are so closely linked.
So this is also a region of cortex, and also hippocampus and amygdala, and all those regions and all these connections are also where some of this research is pointing.
There's also a component of social connection that we can see protective benefits kind of across the lifespan.
So obviously early in development is what David Rico is talking about.
You know these five A's and those are the things that we sort of look to first.
You know what's your home life like.
But interestingly, you know the teen years, which is a time and could be tween or teen when children start to sort of detach and distance themselves from their parents, much to our dismay.
And this often will happen with the mother before the father, which is, I think I've told that anecdote that apparently there's a pheromone that starts unconsciously being unpleasant to teenagers.
And I remember when I found this bit of research out, I said to my children did you know that there's a pheromone?
And I think by then they knew what pheromones were, because it's something we talk about.
That makes you know kids want to like, be like, not so much mama.
And I can't remember which of my kids it was, but one of them was like yeah, I think that's happening.
They're like, yes, you smell.
No, but it's not about smell.
It's a chemical thing.
But anyway, the age at which we see that kind of separation is a time in life where hopefully adolescents are then getting some social reinforcement from friends, right.
From the next sort of social cohort.
For kids who struggle, this is going to be a hard transition time, right?
It's going to potentially increase isolation or loneliness if you have trouble connecting, right?
And add to that social media, the time that we're spending on our phones, add to that COVID-19.
You know we're talking so much about the the significant, the astonishing significant increase in reports of anxiety depression, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts among young people.
This is this transition period that we know is so critical for social interaction and for social connection which, over the last 20 years, the chips have been stacked against us, really all of us.
And then it comes back again as we get even older.
In older age.
It shows that the longevity of anyone is increased drastically by the strength of their social connections.
And there's been so much research.
Why are people living longer in, you know, name it.
There's some communities in Greece and there's some in Japan and Northern Europe.
And everybody's saying, is it the olive oil?
Is it the twigs?
Is it the way the clouds form?
Guess what?
It's social interaction.
It's people who are spending most of their time with other people playing games, playing sheshbesh, what do you call it backgammon?
You know doing Tai Chi.
Drinking good olive oil.
Drinking good olive oil.
No, but in Northern Europe, some of the happiest reported places in the world, and I know people are like it's because of social democracy.
Maybe, but one of the reasons that we know that it is and we know this from what the brain, like literally the brain, is telling us.
We thrive when this aspect of our neurological makeup is is stimulated and supported.
And we don't just thrive in terms of brain health.
We thrive in terms of our whole body.
And yeah, our spirit as well.
Our emotional place.
Us feeling we're connected and we belong.
That's what social connection does.
That's what keeps you young.
Feeling like someone cares about you.
Someone wants to check in.
You have someone to go for a walk with or play the game with.
The game of life?
Yeah.
All very important.
One of my favorite sentences in this article in Neuron quote even the maintenance of weaker social ties has been associated with lower levels of depression.
End quote.
So even the people that annoy you are helping you out.
It doesn't even have to be good.
You don't even have to like them.
It's like pizza and sex.
Even some pizza is better than no pizza.
That's right.
Even cold, crummy pizza.
At least it's pizza.
And of course we're not saying, if you're in an abusive relationship, that those social ties are better than none.
Like, if you're in a situation that is not safe, that is not healthy absolutely, we need you to get out.
But even a D&D game once a week can be helpful.
This is important because I think people, in the effort to optimize, to be more productive, they start to look at relationships, especially as you get really busy at work.
Maybe in your thirties, in your forties, you're like these are the time that I have to I have maybe have young kids.
I have a family.
I have my career.
Like I have the people that I've grown up with, but then you know these new people and you start to see, like how much room do I really have in my life?
And there is a finite amount of room and you can get into a bad trap, or some people can get into a bad trap of like what's this relationship providing?
It's lowering your depression, even if it's not that good.
And I think it's important to recognize.
You know, I think, especially having moved away, it's hard to keep connected to a lot of people I grew up with in Toronto and the time zone is tough, and you know, to keep those relationships.
But to isolate from them and not put that effort in thinking about that as actually having relationships, intense health outcomes.
That's really interesting.
And I had a conversation a couple weeks ago now with a friend who I grew up with.
I grew up playing hockey with him at six years old.
And I played hockey with him for years.
And we went to school together.
We went to summer camp together.
And then we each had families.
We grew apart.
But getting on the phone with him for 40 minutes, Hearing his voice, brought me back to those memories of all those times when I was younger.
There's the magic word.
And all of a sudden I felt this like sense of renewed aspect of myself that I hadn't really felt connected to previously.
It's like going and having that conversation with him, even though we weren't even talking about those old times, just reconnecting.
All of a sudden I had like more of a sense of myself.
I'm going to tell you why right now.
Let's hear it.
It's your striatal neural circuits.
I knew it was my striatal neural circuits.
Well, the rewarding value of social interactions is encoded in our memory.
And so think about all the different kinds of memory there are.
He used to have parties at his house when his parents weren't home.
Okay, so that I don't want to talk about it.
But think about all the different components to memory, right?
What happens, like if you, you know, if you close your eyes and think about you know what's one of the happiest moments you can remember from your childhood.
You know, like it could be a sport.
It could be, you know, a toy you played with.
It could be a meal, Christmas, you know, like any of those memories.
Like when you...
When you experience a memory, right, it does something.
Like you feel it if you're, you know, kind of tuning in somatically.
You're not just thinking something.
Your body is experiencing something, right?
Well, everything we think creates a cascade of neurochemicals.
Right.
So, of course, duh.
Like it does.
So that...
That coding of memory surrounding social interaction is incredibly important.
So why?
We know, and this is just, you know, kind of, there's very basic experiments.
People are more likely to want to think about positive social interactions that they had with others, even if they're of negative things.
So I'm sure there's many things you did that we don't need to talk about, but...
You can have a positive social interaction about a negative event, right?
Meaning something like, oh, we broke into that house or whatever you did.
Not you, someone.
The positivity is in the camaraderie, the connection, you know, the... Not getting caught.
Not getting caught.
Okay, so maybe that's not a great example.
But when people... recall these kinds of memories, these positive memories.
That's what I mentioned.
The.
We know that it's recruiting these striatal neural circuits when we're recalling these memories and positive memories of you know, previous social interactions have an impact on the decisions you make about further connections in the future.
Meaning, meaning you know, it feeds on itself and it grows.
If you had positive experiences that you then choose to recall and you choose, you know, to remember.
In theory, it can lead to choosing more like that.
Now, I think a lot about, like, the people I went to college with.
You know, there's always, like, that dude who wants to talk about college, like, five years after.
And then, like, 10 years later, it's like, exactly, there's that dude, right?
And sometimes it's a lady.
But...
But, you know, there's... We were the best friends.
Right.
Okay.
So that guy may be onto something.
He may be recruiting the most striatal neural circuitry for that.
But it's this reinforcing value, right?
And that's like reward.
It's motivation.
What am I driving towards?
That can lead to positive decision making.
I want more of that, right?
This is fascinating.
I fully experienced this.
So...
Living in a small town that I've just moved to in the last year.
I don't have those connections in the town I live in.
And it's easy to be like, I have work.
I have my kid.
I don't know this person.
Am I really going to be friends with them after playing pickleball a couple times?
Like, is it worth it?
And I don't consciously make that trade-off, but I can feel myself unconsciously making the trade-off or evaluating it.
Could I really see myself being friends with this person?
What effort do I have to go through?
What's the risk and what's the reward?
And how motivated are you?
Exactly.
And these are all different systems in the brain, right?
They're all different. different parts.
And I can feel myself calculating that and feeling risk adverse because of how much I have on my plate.
Really,
I'm like, oh, I'll just cook another meal or spend time with my son or do some self-care.
And interestingly, when you talk about that and when I think back to some of my happiest times, which often were either in summer camp or high school friends and we had that bond, It makes me more open, even not consciously more open, to thinking oh, maybe there's that type of friendship, although different but like the feeling of friendship is almost infectious.
And the fact that that's possible, by remembering those past memories I think I can definitely feel opens me up more to the possibility.
When you say that you're risk-averse...
What you really are is what's called afraid.
And fear kills motivation.
So the motivation to feel like I can put myself out there.
I can meet a new person.
Also, you're a shy person.
You're a very, very... cordial and amicable person.
It's part of your nature.
But it's also like, it's hard to make new friends, even as a grownup.
I don't like chatting that much.
I have friends who are like dead on the phone.
I'll call you out on this episode, Dean.
He's a chatter.
Dean is a chatty Cathy.
I hope you hear this.
But I admire that about him because he can just drop into any social situation.
I don't have that.
So what we're talking about, again, these are all different systems, right?
We've got the reward system.
We've got the motivation system.
We've got the risk system, right?
So what happens when you are recruiting positive memories and positive associations?
It's making the motivation stronger, correct?
The potential for reward is greater and the risk gets smaller.
So everyone talks about, oh, you have to just be in the moment.
How about to only think about right now?
However... Sometimes you have to think about what happened in college.
A neuro hack would be that, before I go into a social situation, I spend a couple of minutes thinking about all the positive connections I've had, which will increase my motivation to have connection in the moment.
And make you less afraid.
And increase my activity in the... Striatal neural circuitry.
So I'd like to take us from memory of good things to coupling.
Okay.
Okay.
The first place I'd like us to go is, it's a rough data point, but an important one.
So we know that sharing experience can lead to social bond creation, right?
That's kind of why we do things together, right?
It increases our connection when we do something together.
And people want to get married for the tax benefits.
Yeah.
What about when we think about addictive behaviors?
There's a lot of research about what happens when couples try to quit smoking.
Is it easier for them to quit together than it is to not quit together and for one of them to quit?
What would you like?
Everybody wants to know.
What would you think?
This is a hard one because, on one hand, if someone falls off the wagon, you're more likely to also fall off the wagon.
You're like, oh, they're smoking.
I'm going to smoke.
I want to say it's easier together, but I mean, this is an episode about connection.
So maybe it is easier together, but I don't know.
For some reason, I think maybe it's easier by yourself.
So I don't have a definitive answer.
But the analyses of the longest term kind of research in this have failed to produce reliable evidence of effectiveness in maintaining smoking cessation beyond six months.
So this is a very interesting thing.
The shared experience of smoking may aid in actually regulating emotional instability in in a way that it feels safer for them not to quit smoking.
Explain that.
So there's a family systems theory of what's called symptom-system fit, in which the act of smoking in this case is a communication function that facilitates a positive social support and maintains a dynamic even though the behavior is not healthy.
Okay.
This is really interesting and my example, you may be like, is not an exact parallel, but Larry David once described how I think it was him and I don't know if it was a wife or someone he was dating.
He quit drinking coffee and the relationship couldn't continue.
So this is what it is.
It's that, even though we know that social connection can promote healthy behaviors and maybe if one is trying to quit smoking it's easier because the other one's like let's be healthy
We can do it, right?
But there are also situations where shared interpretations can lead to basically joint bad decision making.
Yeah.
And what it is, if you think of like what's similar, it's we're in this together.
That's this podcast.
Just joint bad decisions.
But I thought it was interesting because the notion is again we're coded for connection, but you can't always know how it's going to code, you know.
But let's think of a simpler situation.
What happens when two people... look at a piece of art, okay?
This is the example that this article talks about.
So they have the same visual perception of it, right?
You're looking at it from the same vantage point, right?
So nothing's like different about it.
But everybody's going to interpret it differently.
Why might we interpret a piece of art that we look at differently?
I mean, we are different people with different experiences.
Okay.
I know where I begin and you end.
My point is not why we shouldn't be codependent and have the same feelings about a piece of art.
Let's say it's a piece of art and it depicts a dog.
Okay.
You tend to really like dogs.
You have a past experience, positive experiences with dogs.
I've been bitten and scratched by dogs.
I may, just for that reason, be like, eh, doesn't do it for me.
Maybe it's an artist that I'm familiar with that you're not familiar with.
Maybe it's modern art and you don't like modern art, but I really do.
Colors I like, colors you don't like, et cetera.
Great.
So these are the differences.
But what we know is that having a shared, mutual perception of something fosters a social change connection right.
So this is not to say you have to like the same kind of art, but there's a very elaborate calculation that is done.
I mean, think about any social situation.
Think about any situation of peer pressure.
What does it mean to want to fit in?
What are we actually wired for?
It's an interesting balance, because you don't want people who are exactly like you, because you want novelty.
You want that someone to add something that you hadn't thought about and have some contrasting views.
You want to be pushed in your thinking and and how you feel.
On the other hand, you want enough overlap that there feels like a similarity and a connection point, and that's a pretty intricate balance.
Right, and I'm bringing up this art example because that's one of the examples and it's one of the easier ones to put people in an fMRI scanner and say like, what does their brain look like?
If they agree.
If they don't agree, what's their perception?
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex is what is active in these sort of kind of calculations about what's the meaning of this and what does it mean if someone else agrees with me about this right?
But another great example of this is what happens during gossip, right?
That's technically a maladaptive behavior, meaning talking about other people when they're not there especially disparagingly is actually not a healthy thing.
But Why do people gossip?
Why is this part of essentially how we're wired and have to fight against?
Having a mutual understanding about something can make you feel more connected to a person, even if it's a mutual understanding about something that really doesn't feel so good, right.
And they measure this by... There's really interesting ways that psychology measures this.
They have people...
They measure eye contact and how often people turn away and body language and all these things.
But mutual understanding is important.
And you know, one of the places I know that you like to connect, which is actually talked about in this article, is watching television together.
And this is not something that I really enjoy doing. with another person.
Not necessarily.
I really like watching by myself.
Also, that's a different story.
But there's something really interesting that happens when people are consuming the same stimulus, like movies or TV shows.
And this is different than Netflix and chill.
This is different than Netflix and chill.
So there's something called temporal synchrony.
And what they see is It's going to be the new Netflix and chill.
Let's get our temporal synced.
Temporal synchrony is seen in brain regions supporting social cognition when people are watching something together.
So temporal synchrony has to do with... It's neural synchrony.
It's firing.
I'm not here to explain why or why not synchrony is actually determining accuracy, but for the purposes of this review article, which is in one of the most respected medical journals in the world, I'm going to go ahead and say this temporal synchrony is observed and the interpretation is that these two people are experiencing something together.
And that feels like closeness.
What about if it's just music?
Let's talk about what shared experience is.
So in this case, nonverbal facial expressions.
So that can happen during music.
So let's expand it out and say nonverbal facial expressions.
Laughter. chit chat between dyads.
That's what they call it to people in a study is a dyad, right?
Those kinds of things, nonverbal communication, like, oh, Did you see that?
Did you hear that?
Was that funny to you, right?
That shared experience is what is leading to this synchronization.
And it's not happening when you're alone.
I mean, sometimes I do talk to people who aren't in the room, but those communication skills is what they're doing, is it's helping me build a model of what's important to you?
Right.
And in codependency, what's important to you is important to me, but that's taking it to the extreme.
That's taking it to the extreme in a healthy relationship or a healthy interaction.
And this again, doesn't have to be with just a lover.
It could be with a friend.
Oh, we're sharing this together.
This is funny.
We're looking at it together.
Right.
But take that one step further.
And like some of the people I'm closest with, We used to go on canoe trips together.
You're going and venturing out into the unknown as part of a team, having a shared experience of something that is uniquely to the group people that you would go to summer camp with, when you're all together.
And that is an environment that is unique to that scenario.
We're having a shared experience.
Things go well, don't go well.
We navigate that together.
And then afterwards, there's a bond formed.
That's exactly right.
And I think you know when we think about sort of these three systems that we've talked about here, you know, reward and motivation and stress and social, like literally the social cognition of, of human interaction.
These are all systems that are occurring at the same time.
They're overlapping.
It's very, very hard to parse them out.
But I think, you know, if I had to sort of sum up these, like, overarching principles here...
Loneliness is a real thing.
It's a real thing and it can be very hard to escape it without the proper motivation and without really being able to call on enough resources to remember the reward waiting for you so that you are more motivated to push aside the risk that we know is involved with interacting.
And not connecting socially is stressful.
It's stressful to the brain.
It's stressful to the body.
And we are wired to do things to correct the stress that comes from isolation.
We're wired for that.
There's a lot of things that impede it, but that's what we're wired for.
And finally, the notion of I have a way that my brain understands what it feels like to connect and I can recruit that.
I know how, but I need to again be able to navigate the risks and the rewards and be motivated enough to engage in those things to get that ultimate reward of social connection.
I mean.
Even finding a way to have a watch party on a phone for something that you're binging is healthier than doing it by yourself.
Sure.
And some things it's fun to do by yourself.
Like some things you like to watch.
I'm one of the only people I know who likes to watch Narnia.
Over and over.
And Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit over and over and over again.
And that's something...
I mean, I am happy for other people to watch, but if they talk, I don't like that.
And I want to be able to say the things that I want.
I want to be able to cry when I want to.
So certain things it's okay to want to do on your own, but- It's a little ritual, cathartic ritual for you.
It can be a cathartic ritual, but even parallel play, which toddlers tend to participate in and-
And often, you know, for kids who are on the spectrum and also even, you know, teenagers and adults on the spectrum, parallel play is a very comforting way of having social interaction without having to also like.
This is actually a really interesting point.
And the explosion of at-home work in the last three years has really taken away something from us.
Everyone thinks about, is it more productive?
Is it not productive?
You don't have to have the commute.
But also What we lack is the fact that we're not around the energy of other people working.
And that can have a huge detrimental impact on our focus, our ability to be motivated.
So for us, we're a fully remote company.
At the company I co-founded, it's very often that you'll ping someone on Slack and be like hey, are you around?
You may have a question and you're like, oh, are you working on something right now?
Oh yeah, I'm also working.
Let's just kind of hang out.
And it's been shown that people their focus increases, their motivation increases, their feeling of- You're accountable too.
You're accountable to someone.
You may not get up and wander off and get a snack as much.
You may feel like you have much more time there's no real better word than feeling connected.
And you know, it's kind of getting over that hump, of it being like this strange thing of oh, let's just hang out on camera together doing parallel play.
Valerie brings up a good question.
Also, you know, is it the default mode network that leads us to want to be isolated?
And how do we know what's healthy alone time versus what's not healthy alone time?
That's a great question.
It, it, it very well could just be the default mode network.
More likely, it's a combination of all of these different components we're talking about.
And, given your physiology, otherwise your neurophysiology, given other aspects of depression or anxiety or all of those things can be, you know, can be acting on all of these systems.
And you know, I haven't as yet heard of like oh, you can be born with a gene that disrupts your default mode network.
I don't think it works like that.
And so, you know, a whole set of regions.
But when we talk about depression and misregulation of things like the default mode network, you know that's going to look like isolating to some people.
And it may look like other things to other people, but that's going to also depend so much on your particular.
You know, genetic makeup.
What about practical ways to be like, am I isolating because I need to recoup and restore?
And sometimes you know you do need a little time alone versus am I doing that to a point that can be detrimental?
And for me, I definitely do. toggle a line between not being totally sure sometimes.
When I have to do paperwork.
It's much more helpful if I like call you on the phone and be like hey, I got to just do something.
Sometimes we'll be cooking and just have each other on the phone.
And sometimes they're like, are we talking?
No, we're just kind of hanging out.
How do you know?
Or how do people know in general?
The question that I'm hearing you're asking is also there's something to you know, a sense of parallel play and camaraderie?
But the question that I'm hearing you asking is how do I know if I'm isolating or just having alone time?
The answer to that for me is check your motives.
Because if you are motivated by fear, meaning fear of being around other people, fear of what you look like, fear of how you sound, fear that your hair doesn't look right, fear that you put on weight.
If you're motivated by fear, chances are that's isolating.
If you're motivated by an independent desire to have an experience that is preferential.
Alone me and Narnia, so I could cry by myself and people won't tease me.
Are you afraid of being teased, though?
No.
That's me checking my motives and saying I'm not watching Narnia alone because I'm afraid of what it would be like to watch with other people.
I'm watching because I seek pleasure and enjoyment from doing this activity alone, not because I'm afraid of what happens if I'm not alone.
That's isolating.
And are you drained or restored after the time alone?
Yeah, you can do the introvert extrovert test for this as well.
You know, introverts are going to tend to want to do more things alone, and they're going to feel more depleted when they don't.
So there's also, you know, you have to take into account where do I fall on that scale?
But in terms of if I really, for example, if there's a movie that I really want to see, and I don't like watching movies in a movie theater alone, but I'm afraid to ask someone and I end up going alone.
It's good to go alone, but that was motivated not by the desire to sit alone in a movie theater, because that's cool and it's what I like to do, and I know a lot of people.
I actually love going to the movies alone.
I get to stretch out, I pick my seat.
I don't have to take somebody to the bathroom if it's a child or an adult.
But that's really, for me, that's the check-in.
So let's wrap this up.
Let's summarize.
What did we learn today, Mayim?
Well, when I think back to the question from our Ask Mayim, Anything that brought us here.
How do I learn to navigate in a world if I haven't had, let's say, the optimal five A's presented to me?
And what we've talked about today is, I hope, some basic understanding of how the brain is wired, what social connection looks like, whether it's romantic or friendship, or even in a work environment.
If you are missing any of these A's, it can look like a lot of different things.
I'm not going to say it looks like you can't interact socially, but a lot of us have fears about social interactions based on a lack of attention affection allowing, acceptance or Appreciation.
Appreciation.
So if you find yourself a person who is isolating or not really enjoying social interaction or questioning why everyone's telling you to put down your phone, maybe this is something to look at.
Are there messages from when you were very little that might have disrupted the way that you want to approach social interactions?
And what are some of the things that you can do now to try and repair that for your own good?
If you have a question, ask Mayim anything by sending us a DM on Instagram or post a comment on YouTube.
We love comments on YouTube.
We love questions.
We do love questions.
You never know if your question will be featured in an upcoming AMA episode or, in this case, it could turn into its entire own episode.
That's right.
And that was all thanks to at Gen X Biatch.
Her given name.
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And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.
It's Mayim Bialik's breakdown.
She's gonna break it down for you.
She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.
And now she's gonna break down.
It's a breakdown.
She's gonna break it down.
