Find Counseling > Resources > Psychology Briefs > Social Rejection Hurts Brain Function

Social Rejection Hurts Brain Function

Researchers have found that being socially excluded causes notceable changes in the brain.

Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), they monitored 30 subjects' brain activity. After completing a personality inventory half were told their answers indicated they were likely to end up alone later in life. Subjects were then given a simple math test.

Results of the MEG showed marked differences in brain activity between the two groups. Those who were made to feel socially excluded also performed considerably poorer on the math test. Two of the regions where differences in brain activity were noted were the parietal and prefrontal cortex which are responsible for attention and "executive functioning" respectively, likely accounting for this difference.


The research will appear in this month's edition of Social Neuroscience.


Read more: Social exclusion changes brain function and can lead to poor decision-making

SHARE: del.icio.us del.icio.us | Digg It! digg | Add to FURL FURL | Add to Netscape Netscape | Add to Reddit reddit | Stumble! Stumble! | Add to Yahoo! My Web BETA My Web

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.findcounseling.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/125

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Category Tag Cloud



About

This page contains a single entry from Psychology Briefs, the FindCounseling.com Blog, posted on November 15, 2006 9:40 AM.

The previous post was Research Suggests New Theory of Memory Storage.

The next post is Survey: Caregiving Takes Toll on Middle-Aged Women.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the Psychology Research Archives.

Subscribe

Site Search

Therapist Finder





Advanced Search