The Neural Representation Of Loneliness And Its Influencing Factors Of Children

Loneliness refers to an unpleasant or depressed negative emotion caused by the lack of intimacy in quantity or quality in social relationships.Loneliness is not only common among adults,but also among children and adolescents.Seventy-nine percent of children under the age of 18 and 71 percent of 18-to 24-year-olds reported feeling lonely often,with even preschoolers able to verbally accurately describe this feeling.Previous studies have explored the psychological or environmental factors related to loneliness from the aspect of behavior,and also studied the brain regions related to loneliness from the aspect of neural basis.In the cross-section study,individual personality,peer relationship,attachment relationship,social cognitive processing,attention to social information and so on are all related to loneliness.According to neuroimaging studies,loneliness and the "social brain" share a common neurobiological basis,including the anterior cingulate cortex and inferior frontal gyrus.The brain’s default network and mirror nervous system are also thought to be involved in loneliness.Loneliness is a hot topic in psychological research.Although many scholars have discussed the topic related to loneliness,there are few studies on the influencing factors of loneliness in children from a longitudinal perspective.There is a lack of research on the neural basis of loneliness in children.At the same time,there is little research on the neural basis of loneliness and the common lasting influence of influencing factors on children’s loneliness.In view of the above problems,this paper uses longitudinal tracking method,combined with behavioral studies and imaging studies,from the developmental perspective,to explore the basis of the brain structure and function network of children’s loneliness and its influencing factors.In the first study,a cross-sectional and longitudinal study design was used to investigate the effects of personality and peer relationship on children’s loneliness.Behavioral data on children’s loneliness,personality traits and peer relationships were collected in study one,and then collected again at a second time point one year later.First using Pearson correlation analysis to investigate the loneliness and the correlation between personality traits and peer relations,and the results showed that the first time in the children’s loneliness and personality extraversion,agreeableness,responsibility,emotional stability and openness significantly negative correlation,loneliness and peer relations of the most popular dimension has significant negative correlation,and not concern dimension were positively significant correlation.At the second time point,loneliness was significantly negatively correlated with conscientiousness and emotional stability,margally significantly negatively correlated with extraversion,and margally significantly positively correlated with unattention in peer relationship.In order to explore the influence of personality traits and peer relationships on children’s future loneliness,we use structural equation model to conduct structural equation modeling on all data of loneliness at time point 2 and time point 1,and explore the correlation between personality traits and peer relationships and children’s future loneliness.The results showed that children with emotional stability in personality traits had a significant negative correlation with their future loneliness,and unstable emotions had a persistent negative impact on the development of children’s loneliness.The second study focused on the neural basis of loneliness in children,and on this basis,combined with psychometric and neuroimaging studies,further explored whether the influencing factors of loneliness could affect the relationship between loneliness and brain structure and function.In study 2,magnetic resonance imaging data of children were collected at the first time point,and voxel-based morphological methods were used to explore the brain structural basis of loneliness in children.The results showed that the gray matter volume of the right anterior cingulate cortex and the right inferior frontal gyrus cortex was significantly negatively correlated with loneliness in children.The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between children’s loneliness and the intra-network connections of the salience network and the inter-network connections between salience network and the band-cover network.Then we try to combine personality traits and peer relationship data to construct a mediating model between brain and behavior.However,due to the insignificant correlation between the factors affecting loneliness and the results of brain structure and functional network,further model construction was not carried out.The third study adopted a follow-up study,combined with psychometrics and neuroimaging,to further predict the individual’s future loneliness level through the brain representation of loneliness and its influencing factors.However,due to the insignificant correlation between the influencing factors of loneliness and its brain representation in the second study,the third study mainly explored the predictive ability of brain representation of loneliness on the individual’s future loneliness level.The brain structure and function of network results in study 2,respectively,and the second time the loneliness of data to construct the forecasting regression model,the results show that the network of the highlighted connection can significantly predict loneliness of individual future level,high highlight network connection loneliness of individual level will maintain at a high state.In summary,this study combined cross-sectional and longitudinal design,psychometric and neuroimaging methods to explore the brain structure and functional network basis and its influencing factors of loneliness in children.From cognitive behavior level,the personality characteristics of individual itself affects the loneliness of individual level,low openness,low extraversion of individuals in social groups more difficult to obtain high quality intimate relationship,individuals feel loneliness emotion higher,emotionally unstable individuals are more likely to get involved in negative emotions can also lead to higher loneliness;Peer relationships affect loneliness levels,and unattended individuals tend to have higher levels of loneliness.For children with high loneliness,improving their emotional stability through training and giving them more attention may be an effective means to alleviate their loneliness.From neural basis level,children’s loneliness and right anterior cingulate cortex and the right inferior frontal gyrus cortical gray matter volume value,has negative correlation with the highlight within the network connection and highlight network and connection between the network of the belt cover were positively correlated,and highlight the network within a network connection can partly predict individual future levels of loneliness.These results suggest that loneliness in children is related to the brain structural and functional network basis related to inhibitory control and emotional cognition.The results of this paper can not only provide reference for the future study of children’s loneliness,but also provide some guidance for the intervention and treatment of children’s loneliness in the future.