From 2016 to 2018, a team of twelve researchers spent around fourteen months in isolation in the freezing silence of Antarctica – a silence broken only by extremely violent storms. When the team came back home, many of them struggled to socialise, finding it strange to be surrounded by people after all that time in isolation. However, the incident that ended up making the news was when one team member stabbed another shortly after coming back from Antarctica, because said team member kept spoiling the endings of books.
Scientists have noticed behavioural changes that accompany prolonged periods of isolation, but recent studies indicate that the underlying reason for these behavioural changes might actually be brain damage that occurs due to a lack of socialisation. Dr. Hans Christian Gunga was one of the researchers leading the study on the members of this Antarctic expedition specifically, and while he did expect to see certain minor alterations in their brains after prolonged isolation, he was quite surprised to find that these alterations were far more extensive, even surpassing those that might occur with someone experiencing PTSD. In fact, the Antarctic team’s brains looked more like those of patients who were suffering from depression or even Alzheimer’s!
Isolation had caused physical brain damage.
Dr. Moriel Zelikowsky studies the science of fear and aggression, and noticed that increased isolation tended to correspond with increased instances of violence – and not just in humans. Zelikowsky wanted to understand how much isolation changes the brain, so she conducted an experiment with rats, keeping them in isolation for two weeks and then studying the changes in their brain.
When animals are exposed to stress, a molecule called Tac2 as well as other specific molecules increase in number, triggering a response to that stress. However, when in isolation, stress levels remained persistent, and the rats began acting skittish and aggressive.
Dr. Zelikowsky conducted this study to potentially link the increase in Tac2 molecules with functional changes in behaviour related to social isolation. When she studied the rats after the two weeks of isolation, she expected to see increased volumes of Tac2 molecules in specific parts of the brain, such as the amygdala, which handles fear. Zelikowsky and her team tagged Tac2 molecules with a fluorescent compound to help see them better. What they saw completely surpassed their expectations: after just two weeks of isolation, the concentration of Tac2 molecules was so high that they could be visible even without a microscope. Moreover, these molecules were not simply present in the specific areas the team was expecting – they had spread to several other parts of the brain, even parts that were not connected.
In addition to these astonishing findings, Zelikowsky and her team found that the resulting aggression displayed by the rats lingered even after they were removed from isolation, making it very hard – if not impossible – for them to be re-socialised.
(On a side note – Zelikowsky’s study got me thinking about how so many serial killers and violent psychopaths from criminal history have been loners…)
Similar lingering negative effects of prolonged isolation can be seen in humans too, especially in teens and the elderly, for whom the resulting brain damage can have long-lasting effects.
While Zelikowsky and team are working on treatments involving drugs that could potentially prevent brain damage from isolation, we can look to an organisation that has been reintroducing isolated humans into society for decades now – NASA.
Cultural anthropologist Jack Stuster spent many years helping NASA make life in space more liveable for astronauts. Part of his research involved reading personal journals kept by astronauts in space. These journals revealed behavioural changes similar to the kind we have been exploring thus far in this article, with the added element of exaggeration – being so far away and so isolated made even the most trivial problems seem like a big issue.
And yet, time and again Stuster saw astronauts return home and do a fantastic job of readjusting to life on earth. Part of this, he realised, was because they were already highly resilient individuals – a quality that NASA specifically looks out for in astronauts. However, another key aspect to the ability of astronauts to quickly resume a normal life on earth was the rehabilitation programs conducted by NASA between the period of the astronaut landing on earth and their re-introduction to society.
These programs involved two components:
- Physical rehabilitation, to strengthen the muscles and bones that weakened in space due to the lack of gravity (physical exercise is also hugely beneficial to the brain)
- Emotional rehabilitation, wherein astronauts are given tools to help them cope with changes that might have taken place in their absence, and develop a routine that will help them assimilate faster once they are home
The good news is that for most of us, physical exercise and emotional training can reverse the negative effects of isolation. But in this case, prevention (in whatever way possible) is better than cure – humans did not evolve to be creatures of isolation, so regular social interaction is a critical factor for our overall health.
Work Cited
Tabb, Michael. “Being cut off from other humans changes your brain. Here's the science on how.” Scientific American. September 24th, 2020. Web. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSyDIDS1lbY > as seen on April 11th, 2023.
Shankar, Aparna et al. “Social isolation and loneliness: relationships with cognitive function during 4 years of follow-up in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.” Psychosomatic medicine vol. 75,2 (2013): 161-70. doi:10.1097/PSY.0b013e31827f09cd Web. < https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23362501/ > as seen on April 11th, 2023.
Quirk, Michelle. “Your Brain Is Changed by Social Isolation” Psychology Today. December 22nd, 2022. Web. < https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-power-of-community/202211/your-brain-is-changed-by-social-isolation > as seen on April 11th, 2023.