: Mr. Rein, nice to see you. You say this is good for our brain?
Ben Rein: Our brain is programmed for contact. Many activities that used to require personal contact are now automated. When you go to the bank, you go to the ATM instead of the teller. Work is increasingly done in isolation from home. You may have sat in a restaurant before and spoken with the waiter. Now people simply place your dinner in front of your door. The absence of all those small interactions reduces something I call our social diet. This poorer social diet has led us to expect less interaction with one another.
In the Interview: Ben Rein
Neuroscientist at Stanford University. His book “Happy Brain: Why Our Brain Needs Relationships” will be published in late November by Kösel.
: What role did the pandemic play?
Rein: It also made our social diet poorer. In addition to automation, the pandemic is the second major factor in this development. The brain constantly makes predictions about what is happening in the world around us. It knows how much food we will eat, how much sleep we will get, how much social contact we will have.
This is based on our past experiences. When Covid emerged and everyone was put into quarantine or isolation, it was as if alarms were ringing in our brains: Oh my God, this is so much less social contact than I’m used to. I feel so lonely. The numbers show that during the pandemic social isolation led to higher levels of depression and anxiety. But after a few months the brain adapted to the new reality.
: Do you get used to loneliness?
Rein: If I previously expected to see my colleagues seven to ten hours per week, during the pandemic it was zero hours. Now that the pandemic is over for most people, we have adjusted to a lower level of social contact.
: When I sit in a crowded subway and hear far too many people, I’m glad for tools like noise-canceling headphones. Can it sometimes be sensible to impoverish the social diet?
Rein: It’s natural to suppress sensory stimuli in an uncomfortable environment. But we have a very long evolutionary history in which we survived very well as a group. Our brain is wired to perceive being with others as rewarding and pleasant. The involved neurotransmitters are called oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin; they are colloquially known as the “happiness hormones.”
: What happens when the contact, i.e., the happiness hormones, are absent?
Rein: Isolation activates the stress response system, which negatively affects health. When stress becomes chronic, it becomes really problematic. Lonely people have a higher risk of diabetes, depression, anxiety, dementia, and suicide. If you look at mortality alone, lonely people have a 50 percent higher risk of dying. These results come from long-term studies with hundreds of thousands of people. It is true that by seemingly harmless, harmless choices, like staying home on Friday night, not going to the office, or ordering groceries online when it becomes a habit, you expose yourself to a health risk.
: In your book you also write that our brain has certain features that hinder us from showing empathy towards each other.
Rein: Empathy is the ability to understand and feel the emotions of another person. Communication through empathy used to be incredibly helpful for survival in groups. For example, if you sense someone’s anger about to start a fight, you can intervene and prevent the fight from breaking out. But imagine meeting a member of a rival group who is lying injured on the ground. It would be better for you not to help the person. Your brain is better off if it does not empathize with and feel their pain.
: That was thousands of years ago. Do such transmissions still help us today?
Rein: We live in a completely different world. But the hardware of our brain is still the same. That is what research shows. People show less empathy for strangers if they belong to a different religion, have a different political stance, a different sexual orientation, or skin color. If people can draw a line between themselves and strangers, the brain areas that govern empathy are not as strongly activated.
That is why I am concerned by the increasing polarization I see in the United States. When I have a new neighbor and want to introduce myself in good faith, but then I see the flag of a party in the front yard that I don’t like, my brain will show less empathy toward that person.
: Unlike thousands of years ago, we can now follow suffering on distant continents in real time in our social media feed. There are studies showing that there can be an overwhelming amount of empathy as well. That leads to burnout or turning off. How do we find the right balance?
Rein: I don’t have an answer to that either. For example, during physicians’ training, their empathy tends to decline as they repeatedly face pain and suffering. The brain learns to shield itself because too much empathy is overwhelming and not productive. In a globally connected world we are constantly confronted with suffering we cannot fix. Still, for me the best possible scenario remains to preserve our empathy.
: Is our brain capable of unlearning learned patterns such as sexism and racism?
Rein: There is an interesting report from the United States. A neo-Nazi signs up for a study investigating how MDMA changes well-being during touch. MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, is one of the few drugs in the world that can enhance empathy. He participated in this study, which had nothing to do with his views on the topic, and emerged utterly transformed.
He thanked the researchers, said that love is the answer to everything, and no longer identified himself as a neo-Nazi. For me, this story underscores the importance of empathy. When you see other people as fellow humans and can understand their emotions, it makes them human.
: Free MDMA for all neo-Nazis. That sounds good, but …
Rein: … is certainly not a universal remedy against discrimination. But MDMA promotes the release of neurotransmitters that are important for social interactions and that would also act in our brains without MDMA. If a drug can take us there simply by altering our neurochemistry, why couldn’t our experiences or our behavior get us there in a similar way by changing our neurochemistry? In fact there is evidence that you can train your empathy, and in a way that changes the appearance and structure of the brain. There is a way forward, but it requires effort.
: From the way you speak about the brain, it sounds as if we humans are robots, controlled by a brain-computer that can change as needed through chemistry. Can everything in humans really be explained by neurochemistry?
Rein: I believe, ultimately, it all comes down to neurophysiology. I actually view the brain as a computer, and every experience we have and every feeling can be explained by electrochemical signals that are occurring in our brains at that moment. I think a lot about what it would be like if our brains were transparent. When I experience a moment of religious fervor, or another moving, life-changing experience, and then take a snapshot of a transparent brain, I would see the neurochemistry associated with that feeling.
Due to the complexity of our neurobiology, states may exist that appear inexplicable. Perhaps we will never be able to mystify understanding through brain imaging. But I do not believe there is anything beyond what happens in the brain.
: We’ve discussed a lot about social interaction: Does it make a difference for the brain whether I sit opposite someone or we speak via a smartphone?
Rein: Unfortunately there are few studies on this. But I see it this way: when we shift from in-person meetings to video conferences, we lose eye contact. When we move from video conferences to phone calls, we lose facial expressions and body language. When we switch from a phone call to a text message, we lose tone of voice. In this way, we gradually lose the cues that tell our brain that we are interacting with another person. These social signals are important for our empathy.
: Is that why social media and online interactions often become so ugly?
Rein: Yes. Our empathy systems in the brain switch off, and we tend more toward hostile behavior. This goes hand in hand with the absence of a sense of reward that we often feel after real-world interactions. There is not yet neurological evidence for this, but it is proven that people are happier when they interact with real people than online.
: Whether we promote social contact is also a political decision, for example in how cities are planned. What changes at that level do our brains need in order to find more friends?
Rein: In health policy there are efforts to address issues such as not everyone having enough to eat. We need similar efforts for emotional deficits – such as increasing isolation. In a museum in my hometown there is, for example, a monthly gathering for people with memory problems. People who otherwise don’t get out much meet up and talk. Social interaction can be a form of health promotion.
