Loneliness makes your brain work differently, study shows
From the 95-year-old couple who called 999 because they wanted someone to talk to, to the John Lewis Christmas advert which is taking the nation by storm for its touching relationship between an old man and a little girl, the issue of loneliness has never been more prominent. In recent weeks we've also heard about the pensioner who rang a local BBC radio station to tell them he missed his wife, and have received sobering statistics from charity Age UK who say a million elderly people often go a whole month without speaking to anyone. And now researchers have shown being lonely can actually have a physical impact on your brain. The study, published in the journal Cortex, was led by married researchers Stephanie and John Cacioppo, from the University of Chicago, who are experts on the psychology and neuroscience of loneliness. They found that lonely people's brains differ from those of non-lonely people, Medical Daily reported. In fact, lonely people are actually more alert