The Importance of Social Connection for Brain Health

By Dirk Hoffman

The Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and The Graduate School hosted an author spotlight event Oct. 28, allowing Rein, an award-winning neuroscientist with more than one million social media followers, to discuss his book “Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection.”

Rein says he has always been curious about social interaction and distinctly remembers surveying his elementary school cafeteria during lunchtime and observing a variety of social voltage throughout the room.

“Some tables were really outgoing, super playful and loud, while other tables had students sitting quietly where everyone was reading a book or staring down at their sandwiches to avoid conversation,” he says.

“I always found this interesting that everywhere you go you would find some people who were more outgoing and others who were shier and more introverted. I never really stopped paying attention to that.”

Rein earned his doctoral degree in neuroscience at the Jacobs School working in the lab of Zhen Yan, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of physiology and biophysics.

“We were studying autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and genetics and their neurological basis. At the PhD level I was finally able to study the neurobiology of social behavior,” Rein says.

“In ASD there are known genetic alterations and so the question we were looking at was how do these changes in the genetic code alter the neurophysiology and how the brain is functioning?” he adds. “It gave me a chance to fulfill my childhood dream of investigating this social continuum of introvertism and extrovertism in a neurological basis.”

As a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, Rein also studied the neurobiology of empathy and how the drug MDMA (better known as molly or ecstasy) enhances empathy.

“Through all my experience and research, I have accumulated a lot of unique understanding and perspective about the importance and nature of social behavior,” he says. “That was most of the inspiration to write this book.”

In the book, Rein asserts that three hard truths about social interaction must be recognized:

• we live in a divided world
• division is the enemy of brain health
• the brain has internal shortcomings that can drive us apart

Rein says that tracking death by any cause over a long period of time in large studies of millions of people finds that those who are more socially isolated have a 32 percent greater chance of death by any cause. 

“The way I frame this topic is the value of social interaction is a two-sided coin. On one side you have great value in socializing and on the other hand there is great detriment in isolating,” he says.

It makes a lot of sense if you look at it through an evolutionary lens, Rein argues.

“Millennia ago, when we humans were living in different times, we were much more effective working in groups,” he says. “We had all these great tools that allowed us to connect and socialize and understand each other. We needed to stick together for the sake of our survival, so our brains had social reward systems built into them.”

When people socialize and have positive interactions their brains release neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin, that make them feel good, Rein says, also noting that isolation is a stressor that triggers activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

“It makes sense, because if we are better together, than we are worse apart,” he says. “We are actually at a worse risk of being picked off or dying on our own.”

What is happening today is that people are spending much more time alone, Rein asserts.

“Data looking at time spent alone, number of friends, rate of people who report being lonely — all these things are going in the wrong direction,” he says. “The realistic vision I have for how we can move forward is engaging in more deliberate interactions.”

Rein says one way people can do that is by making it a point to talk to strangers.

“I think we have collectively and culturally built this understanding that it is not really that typical to conversate with people around us all the time,” he says. “But that is actually one really easy and realistic step toward a more connected, brain-healthy social environment.”

Rein says people should not be hesitant to interact with strangers.

“Our brains are wired to treat people unlike us in a much worse way,” he says.

“If you think about a Venn diagram where you are one circle and the other person is the other circle, the greater the overlap is, the greater the level of empathy you will experience and the further apart the circles are, there is less empathy.”

Rein stresses the importance of recognizing that our brains are wired for this type of thinking, which is not helpful in the current world.

“When it comes to building connections and trying to overcome all of this, I think it is helpful to look past things like political affiliations or religious beliefs,” he says. “If we embrace others even if they are different than us, I think we can reap benefits on the other side of those actual instinctual barriers.”

Jamal B. Williams, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry, and Elizabeth Sengupta, director of community engagement in the Department of Psychiatry, moderated and hosted the event, respectively. Williams worked alongside Rein as a doctoral student in Yan’s lab at the Jacobs School.

A brief question-and-answer session, facilitated by Sourav Sengupta, MD, MPH, associate professor of psychiatry, and Peter S. Martin, MD, MPH, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry, followed the book talk.