It is impossible not to empathize with loneliness and its many dimensions. It strikes, whether you are old or young; married or single; Finnish or Indian – all humans who share this planet with more than seven-and-a-half billion other human beings will know, at some point, the feeling of loneliness.
After all, we are programmed for it.
John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, has proposed the idea that human beings are designed to feel lonely – as a sort of evolutionary prod to get us to perform activities that bring us closer to one another.
His theory ties into recent research that has identified the presence of ‘Salience Networks‘ in our brain circuits. It’s research that looks at the effects of a dash of electricity to the anterior mid-cingulate cortex – a middling region of the brain that has to do with making you seek things for their reward. It suggests that there is a reward for the sensation of loneliness – but it’s only attainable if you work against the factors causing you to feel lonely.
If the academic aspects of loneliness arrive with a sense of heavyweight, it’s because the topic is decidedly so. Each of us may experience a different form of loneliness, or react to it in different ways.
Copyright©Madras Courier, All Rights Reserved. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from madrascourier.com and redistribute by email, post to the web, mobile phone or social media.Please send in your feed back and comments to editor@madrascourier.com
