We all know the importance of a good diet, sufficient exercise and a good night’s sleep, but there’s one more essential thing we all need to be healthy. Social connection. Simply put, our brains need friends. Neuroscientist Dr. Ben Rein reveals exactly what is happening in our brains when we interact with friends, family, even strangers, and how exactly this affects our physical and mental health… the many benefits of a good social life and the real risks of isolation and loneliness. He also offers simple tips on how we can be more social and to make better use of one of the most powerful, easiest, and cheapest ways to a healthy, happy life.
Bio / website : https://www.benrein.com/
Phil Stieg
Today, with social media replacing social interactions, loneliness has become a serious epidemic in society. In fact, in a recent survey, nearly 60% of American adults say they were lonely. We know that this can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental and physical problems. But how does spending less time with others actually affect our brains? Today, we will be talking with Dr. Ben Ryan, a neuroscientist who will reveal the science behind “Why Brains Need Friends”, which just happens to be the title of his new book.
Ben, thanks for being with us today.
Ben Rein
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Phil Stieg
I think the audience needs to understand how you got into this business in the first place. In the forward of your book, talk about how you got into psychology, which is your background, but also neuroscience. Can you give us those details?
Ben Rein
Sure. Yeah, I’ll give you the short version. So when I was a kid and I was in elementary school, I was always interested in social behavior, and I didn’t think of it as social behavior, the very scientific term now. But back then, I thought of it as, Isn’t it funny that that group of students over there at that table in my cafeteria is really loud and rambunctious? But that table is pretty quiet, and they’re all sitting around just looking at their sandwiches. Where do I fit? Which table am I suited for? I was always just interested in this, and I enjoyed people watching, but I was fascinated by the fact that we were all somewhere on this spectrum of how outgoing we were and how much we enjoyed socializing. By the time I got to college, I was still fascinated by this and decided to study psychology as my major, but I had a deep interest in neuroscience, so I changed my major, or I at least added a biology minor so I could still graduate early, went on to a PhD in neuroscience, and have been extremely fortunate to live out my dream of studying the neuroscience of why some kids are sitting at tables really rambunctious and others are sitting quiet. I did my PhD research on the neurobiology of autism spectrum disorder, and then I did my postdoc at Stanford studying a different but related topic of the neuroscience of empathy.
Phil Stieg
Most of the book focuses really on neuroscience, which is your passion, clearly. But even prior to that, there is some good data that you cited in the book about neuropsychology and psychological tests and studies that were done that suggests that interactions are good for us. Can you highlight a few of those?
Ben Rein
Sure, of course. Basically, the research suggests from multiple angles that people feel good after they socialize. And what’s interesting is there’s two ways to ask that question. One way is if you observe people while they go through their daily life, and every once in a while, you have them pull out a sheet of paper or their phone and rate, How are you feeling right now? How’s your mood? If you do that just after they had a social interaction, you will find that they feel better after they interacted. And the longer they interacted with someone, the higher they score their mood, the better they feel, which is great. It means that when we interact with others, we feel better. But in that context, those are organic interactions. You’re not asking them to create an interaction. You’re asking them to just tell you how they’re feeling. So what happens if you ask somebody explicitly, go interact with that stranger over there, have a conversation with them, and then report back how you feel? That is a very different scenario. And the reason this is relevant and an important question to ask is because in our modern world, where we are more lonely than ever, and we have fewer friends, and we have this loneliness epidemic, it would seem that the remedy would be to do just this, interacting more deliberately. So if it doesn’t work, that’s a problem.
But the good news is it does work. In these studies, there’s a researcher, Dr. Nicholas Eppley, who has done a range of these studies that I’m just in love with. I think they’re so great because he does them in real life, he will have people, for instance, riding the train to work or taking the bus to work, he will have them go talk to somebody and rate how it impacted their experience. And people will rate that they feel much better. They enjoy the experience more, they learn more after having an interaction. And importantly, that experience outperforms their expectations. They tend to assume that if they go up and talk to someone, A, that person is probably going to say, No, thanks. I’d rather sit here quietly, which is not true. In reality, zero % of the people were rejected. And B, they expect that the conversation is going to have a modest, if any, benefit on their experience when it actually dramatically outperforms that in all these different settings. So the good news is whether we have an interaction just organically or we deliberately think, I’m going to talk to someone right now because I think it might make me feel better. The research suggests that both of those scenarios will actually improve our well-being or at least improve our mood temporarily.
Phil Stieg
Would we agree that the brain’s function is for the brain to survive – and secondarily, for a procreation of one species so that everything goes on?
Ben Rein
Absolutely.
Phil Stieg
And if we assume that then, why is it that social interaction is so important? The brain itself just wants to survive. What neurochemically is happening in the brain that makes social interaction a positive thing in terms of evolution?
Ben Rein
I do this little exercise in the book for the reader, where I ask the reader to suppose that they are evolutionary biology and that they are the force that determines the survival of species and the shaping of species to ensure that they will survive. And by that, I mean, for instance, hypothetically, a long-haired animal moves into a much hotter climate. And so your job would be to make sure that some of those animals adapt with shorter hair, and that randomly, some of those animals are born with shorter hair so that they’re not so hot, they don’t overheat, and then the species shift so that they can survive in that new climate.
So, when it comes to humans, let’s say you’re observing humans, and your job is to make sure they stay alive, and you find that humans tend to survive really, really well when they work in groups because they happen to have a lot of these really powerful social skills and social indicators. They have, my gosh, they have eyebrows and they have white sclera. The thing surrounding the eye is white so they can see where each other are looking. And through that, they can read each other’s minds. They have empathy. They have all these amazing tools.
So how do you make sure then that humans will stick together for the sake of the survival of the species? Well, one way to do this would be by making them feel good being around each other so that they will be naturally motivated to stick together, and therefore, it’ll just be in their best interest to survive. It’ll make them feel good to be in the situation that makes them survive best.
That’s exactly what social species, like humans, show. We have social reward systems built into our brains. The neurotransmitters that are released when we socialize are generally thought of as reinforcing, like dopamine. Dopamine is reinforcing. It’s our brain signal to say, Hey, look, what we’re experiencing is quite good for you. You’re eating a delicious turkey sandwich. This is great. Then dopamine will tell you, eat this turkey sandwich again because it’s good for you and it has nutritional value. Similarly, dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters released to drive this social reward.
The other two are serotonin, which, of course, many people often relate to mood, and oxytocin, the love hormone. Actually, it turns out that oxytocin is this initial big domino. I like to think of three dominoes falling over. So the first one is oxytocin. Oxytocin is released, and then it causes dopamine and serotonin to be released. There’s two smaller dominoes being knocked over and falling as well. And this trifecta seems to be what drives social reward. Our brains literally reward us and make us feel good and make it feel productive to be around others, because that at one point was the only thing that kept us alive.
Phil Stieg
58 % of society describes itself as being lonely. Why is it not then that people go out and try to seek interactions? It would seem to me that if you’re lonely, it would drive you to do that. What’s not happening?
Ben Rein
Yeah, it’s a really good question and a big one. I mean, I think one of the factors is we are bad social estimators. We anticipate that if we did go out there, it’s not going to go well. But the other thing is that social isolation also is associated with alterations, these changes, and how the brain processes social information. And so when people are isolated, they actually experience less social reward. So when they do get out and socialize, they don’t quite benefit as much. Initially, that doesn’t mean permanently. They also struggle with things like trust. They not only judge others as less trustworthy, but they are judged as less trustworthy themselves, so the quality of their interactions may be worse. They also tend to view social signals more negatively, and their brains basically pay closer attention or show larger responses to negative social information. And so it seems like being isolated tends to bias your brain in favor of being skeptical and not necessarily embracing social interaction in a positive way.
I always tend to look at everything from an evolutionary perspective. And the way that this makes sense to me is that if you are cast out from your tribe, and eventually, after some time, again, I’m talking about a long, long time ago, not currently. We don’t live in tribes anymore, of course. But if you are, and then you eventually find your way back to community, whether that’s in your previous community or a new community, it would be wise to be cautious. You don’t want to just assume that you are welcome and that you can trust the people around you. It would actually be smart to not necessarily immediately trust the people who you are now working with. It may be wise to not experience as much social reward because maybe these aren’t your people. Maybe it would be better if you went back with your old community. And so let’s be cautious about integrating too quickly.
This may be what’s quietly underlying our problem nowadays. And then you think about the fact that this is probably happening to many people neurobiologically. And then on top of that, obviously, nobody wants to talk about politics, but I think that as a social neuroscientist, I can’t help but notice the trend of our country. And when you’re already struggling with trust, and then we’re introducing emerging new reasons to distrust others and to be skeptical of others because of their political affiliation, and automatically 50 % of the country is viewed differently. I think it, to me, explains a lot of what’s going on and why everyone is experiencing the insularity that we’re all focused on nowadays.
Phil Stieg
You also spend a chapter talking about the effects of love on the brain. And I want you to clarify the direct effects of love on the brain neurochemically, but then also interpersonal interactions and that type of effect on the brain.
Ben Rein
After looking into the literature and reading a bunch, I actually changed my perspective on love. I am, fortunately, a human being who has and does love. I love my wife. I love my parents. I love my friends. And in about three weeks, I will have my first daughter, and I’m sure I’m going to love the heck out of her. And what is love? What are we even talking about? And that’s where my perspective changed.
Oxytocin, which is often called the love hormone – Oxytocin triggers serotonin release and dopamine release. And that combination of those two neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine, at the same time, seems to be really, really powerful for some reason. And if you look at If we had a synthetic form of oxytocin, well, we do. But if you had a drug that does what oxytocin does, if it drove the release of those two neurotransmitters, what would it be? Well, there is a drug that does that. It’s called Extasy, MDMA, right? Yeah.
The fact that oxytocin drives the same brain, it tickles the same brain systems as Extasy, says a lot about the power of love and connection.
My view on love and how I’ve shifted is to understand that love can be defined neurobiologically as an abundance of oxytocin. Oxytocin drives a social reward. It’s what makes It makes us feel reinforced by the presence of someone. You spend time with someone, you feel this is productive. I feel like I am gaining something. I want to come back and spend more time with someone. And so love is effectively an abundance of social reward. Being around someone tells your brain, this is good for you. And if you think about evolutionarily, it makes perfect sense when you are in a position to reproduce and you are with a potential mate, your brain should tell you, stick around this person. This is really good. We like this a lot. And so I think that the complex human emotion that we experience in love is really just this abundance of our brain saying, Keep on doing this because this is really great.
And I think in the same way when you have a child – from what I’ve heard from parents is that it’s unbelievable. It’s this immense love like you’ve never experienced before, which again makes sense because it’s your brain releasing oxytocin. And by the way, those two relationships, romantic relationships and parent-child relationships, seem to have the highest levels of oxytocin of all. And it’s your brain telling you, stick around this person, because with your partner, it’s the opportunity to reproduce with your child. It is you have reproduced, now protect this child because this is the most important thing evolutionarily.
But the other great, great thing about love and oxytocin is that oxytocin, in addition to all these things I just described, which are fantastic, and that it does for us and the role it plays, it also seems to have a bunch of inherently therapeutic properties. It’s been associated with being anti-inflammatory, being neuroprotective, perhaps supporting wound healing, perhaps supporting anxiety and stress, bone growth, immune support. There’s all these links that suggests that oxytocin might be just this amazing therapy. And of course, that’s not me saying, Oh, go to your doctor and ask for oxytocin injection. Of course, But it’s interesting because, again, sorry for going back to evolutionary perspective all the time, but it just makes sense.
When you are in position to reproduce, and then you have created a child and you are raising that child, and so you’re just full of oxytocin, it’s important that you’re healthy so that you, A, can successfully reproduce, and then B, can stay alive to raise your child and protect them and make sure they stay alive. And so when we’re looking at the value of love, it’s not only the amazing experience of love, but also the benefits of love for your systemic health. And that, I think, is one of the lesser known but really truly amazing things about social neuroscience.
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Narrator:
Parents of a new infant can often feel very isolated, struggling with lack of sleep, constant nursing, and getting to know this strange little person that has suddenly become the center of their world.
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The exhaustion of new parents has a lot to do with the extended period of helplessness in human infants, which is why so many cultures throughout history have developed support systems for new parents.
It has a fancy scientific name — Allomothering”— and it’s not just a human custom. There is a fascinating (and colorful) example to be found in the wild.
In Southeast Asia, female silvered leaf monkeys work cooperatively to protect and nourish any babies in their troop. Juvenile females help carry babies as the troop moves about – helpful for a tree-dwelling species. Lactating females will even breastfeed other female’s babies.
While adult leaf monkeys have dark grey fur, their babies are born with bright orange fur the color of a life jacket or a traffic cone. Scientists believe this makes them easier to spot in the trees, and easier for their allomothers to keep an eye on them.
Within a few months a baby’s orange fur turns medium grey, which is a signal to the troop that this “toddler” is now big enough to start striking out on its own and doesn’t need the protection of the allomothers.
One obvious advantage of allomothering is that the birth moms get a needed post-partum break to rest, feed and regain her strength. And it strengthens the social bonds among the whole troop, ensuring the survival of the next generation.
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Humans have a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Our primate cousins would add that it takes a troop to raise a monkey.
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Phil Stieg
What is inner brain synchrony?
Ben Rein
Inner brain synchrony is one of those things in real science that sounds like it’s not real science. It sounds like it’s fake. When I first learned about this, I thought it was a bunch of bogus, but it’s real.
If two people are interacting or having a shared experience, their brain activity can synchronize. If you had them both in a brain scanner, you would see very similar activity in their brains, not everywhere across their entire brain, but in specific brain areas.
It’s an unbelievable concept. But it is a real thing, and it’s fascinating because it seems that interbrain synchrony happens the most in parent-child relationships or romantic relationships. It also has been shown that interbrain synchrony in certain contexts, in certain situations may support and facilitate teamwork, which is interesting because it makes sense that if you and your romantic partner, or you and your child have this special ability to get on the same wavelength, literally, and work together through challenges, that is incredibly advantageous.
How unbelievable is that concept? When you’re an infant that there’s evidence that infants and their mothers experience interbrain synchronic, that we as a species, we are just so incredibly thoroughly built for connection and for companionship and working together that our brains can literally synchronize. It’s unbelievable.
Phil Stieg
In the book, you mentioned that married couples tend to recover faster from illness. Do married couples live longer as well?
Ben Rein
I would imagine that’s probably true. But what I can tell you, and the example I cite in the book is in many forms of cancer, when someone is diagnosed with cancer, one of the strongest predictors of survival is if they are married. And that I found to be astounding. And in many cases or in several cases, being married was actually a stronger predictor of survival than getting chemotherapy. One of the reasons why being married is a stronger predictor is because their partner encourages them to get the gold standard treatment, which includes chemotherapy. Not that chemotherapy isn’t effective, but the social support provided by a partner, especially when going through a really stressful time like that, so immensely valuable. And then you think about that oxytocin circulating and all the benefits it may have. And it starts to round out your perspective to think, wow, okay, yeah, being happily married and having a life full of social partners that you care about is extremely valuable.
Phil Stieg
But it makes scientific sense, doesn’t it? That if you’re demonstrating acts of love and friendship and compassion and empathy, that as you talked about inner brain synchrony, the same areas of the brain in your child are going to respond to that. And brain development is dependent upon activation. So the more you activate it, the more they’re going to have that part of their brain develop. Doesn’t it make common sense?
Ben Rein
Yeah, right on. I mean, yeah. And what you’re describing is also more empathy than interbrain synchrony. But it’s funny because you’re making me realize, it’s a really interesting point. Empathy is interbrain synchrony because the research on empathy shows that when people observe other people demonstrating emotions like pain or like happiness or whatever, the observer’s brain starts to resemble what the other person is experiencing. So with pain, for instance, if an NFL football player were I’m going to run into this room right now and tackle me and you just watched it and you saw me in pain, the brain areas that turn on when you are in pain, you’re experiencing that emotional discomfort associated with pain. Those brain areas would turn on in your brain. (I’m sure a lot of other brain areas, you’d be shocked at why an NFL football player just entered my office.) But importantly, we seem to actually step into and model that state of the other person. And I think that I can’t really imagine, truthfully, how this even begins in childhood. How does a baby’s brain just grab onto someone else’s emotion having never done it before?
It must be one of those things with child development, where one day you wake up and they’re just doing something that they never did before. It seems like the brain is just always growing. I can’t wait to witness that myself. But it’s probably just one of those things where one day the brain just learns, oh, that person smiling. I’m going to smile.
And it’s so interesting how mimicry, the role mimicry plays and how, for instance, our facial muscles tend to mimic other people’s in our body language. Subconsciously, without realizing it, we will imitate what other people are doing. And so if someone’s smiling, the muscles in your face that lift your cheeks or the corners of your mouth into a smile, those muscles will activate imperceptibly. You won’t notice it. Someone looking at you won’t notice it. If I had muscular recording sitting there on your muscles, the muscle recorders, those would notice it. And so in doing so, that muscle activate that feeds back to your brain saying, oh, I guess we’re smiling. And then suddenly you feel a bit better. And therefore, you have just without even thinking about it or even realizing it, you have absorbed someone’s emotions by just observing them.
Phil Stieg
I do the simple test of that in New York City. If I walk down the street with a frown on my face, I rarely get a smile. If I walk down the street with a smile on my face, it’s amazing how many people will smile back at me.
Ben Rein
There you go. Yeah.
Phil Stieg
Introverts and extroverts respond to social interactions in the same way It’s just that introverts don’t need as much of it. Is that true?
Ben Rein
That’s exactly right. That interaction is good for everybody. What I want introverts to recognize is that it’s perfectly okay to not want to socialize as much as others. And especially when there’s like studies just came out on these super-agers, people who are 80 plus, but their brains look like and their cognitive abilities match people who are 20 to 30 years younger. And what the study showed is that one of the unifying traits of these super-agers is that they’re more extroverted and they live more social lives. And that makes perfect sense given all the research that I describe in my book and on this podcast. And so I hope that introverts don’t listen to that and think, well, I guess I’m going to die when I’m 40, right? There’s no way I’m going to make it because that’s not true.
I hope that everybody takes from my messaging and from the book is we all have some brain defined set point where we are happy with the level of interaction we have. I like to use the analogy of a flower and being watered. Every plant needs to be watered, I think. I don’t know. I don’t study that. I’m assuming All plants need to be watered. And some plants need more water than others. For introverts, they might only need a little bit of water. But once you’ve watered it enough, then it’s okay to withdraw and let the soil dry out.
What I worry is that people let their soil to dry out for way too long and that they say, I’m an introvert. I don’t like being extroverted. I don’t like socializing. And they just keep their soil dry. And I think that is where we see those associations with all those health effects, especially considering that when you do that a lot, then you may also be welcoming issues with trust and issues with all these other social judgments that may impair our ability to connect with others.
I hope that what people will take from it is it may be one interaction a week, it may be 20 interactions a week. But for everybody to identify what their comfort level is and where their brain is happy, not oversaturated, not undersaturated, but meeting their brain’s specific needs. As long as we’re keeping our brains happy, we’re doing just fine. It doesn’t have to be every single day.
Phil Stieg
For my final question, I just want to ask you, if I’m feeling lonely and I don’t feel like I’ve got enough social interaction, what five steps can I take to correcting that?
Ben Rein
Sure. Well, I mean, first off, obviously, make plans, right? Do something, reach out to someone, get something on the calendar, just do it, and then show up.
Number two, look for any places in your life where you have automated interactions. You used to go to the grocery store. Now you order your groceries on Instacart. You used to see the doctor face to face. Now you use telemedicine. There’s so many examples like this. So if you can look for those places in your life where you’ve done that, try to restore the face to face contact where you can, assuming that you have the time and it’s not super inconvenient.
Number three, look for building community through shared interests. You can imagine we all experience this where you have certain things that you really identify with. And if someone does identify with that, they immediately enter this special circle in your mind. That’s very real. It’s very possible that you experience more empathy for them, you treat them more favorably. So if you can identify groups where you have a shared interest, a great example of this is actually looking for a group that’s organized around that interest. If you love mountain biking or you love hiking, find a group that… people who are meeting up to go mountain biking or go hiking or watch Shakespeare in Theater or whatever it is. So find those groups. Find your in-group, basically.
Number four, with that being said, try not to exclude outgroups. Try to recognize when your brain is Separating someone because they are different. And instead of pushing them out and saying, I’m not going to form a relationship with this person, try to form a relationship. Because what you will find is that probably most of the time, they’re actually not that bad. And then by doing that, When you do allow that relationship to form, you’re sending the signal to your brain that, oh, people who I thought were enemies are actually allies. And that’s tremendously satisfying and comforting for the brain to recognize that you’re actually not in danger. This person is not a threat to you. And there’s this special sentimental experience of befriending an enemy. There’s something really gratifying about that.
And then number five, interact with strangers. I’m telling you, just try it. For those who are very, very introverted, this one probably sounds like absolute torture. You don’t have to do it. It’s okay. But if you have the opportunity to try it, go for it. You’re waiting in line, the cashier, the grocery store, the line is taking forever. Talk to the person next to you. What’s the worst that can happen?
We spend a lot of time sitting around and waiting and think about what you do in those moments. Nine times out of 10, you’re probably pulling your phone out of your pocket and you’re checking your email, you’re scrolling social media. I mean, why not connect with the person next to you, build community? You don’t have to get their phone number and hang out all the time but just talk to that person. And I think that’s a really important experience for the human brain.
Phil Stieg.
So Dr. Ben Rein, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I think that it’s intuitive that having friends is exceedingly important. But I think you’ve added the science to this. Thank you so much for writing this book and for being with us today.
Ben Rein
Well, thank you for having me. It’s been a great conversation.
