Loneliness is contagious,heritable, affects one in four people – and increases the chances of early death by 20% – says US social neuroscientist John Cacioppo. The genuine news? He thinks it can be treated…Extract: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia LaingFirst person: what people say about being aloneProfessor John Cacioppo has been studying the effects and causes of loneliness for 21 years. He is the director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. His book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection examines the pathology and public health implications of the subject.
You absorb been studying social connection and loneliness for more than two decades. How did you arrive to it as a subject?
It was not biographical, and I don’t think. Back in the early 90s I had outlined the new field called social neuroscience,the study of the neural mechanisms within a defined social species. Social species are those that create steady bonds, which absorb societies and cultures. And neuroscience hadn’t really studied those things.
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Source: theguardian.com