When people are forced to be isolated from each other, do they crave social interactions? To address this question, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural responses evoked by food and social cues after participants (n = 40) experienced 10 h of mandated fasting or total social isolation. After isolation, people felt lonely and craved social interaction. Midbrain regions showed selective activation to food cues after fasting and to social cues after isolation; these responses were correlated with self-reported craving. By contrast, striatal and cortical regions differentiated between craving food and craving social interaction. Across deprivation sessions, we found that deprivation narrows and focuses the brain’s motivational responses to the deprived target. Our results support the intuitive idea that acute isolation causes social craving, similar to the way fasting causes hunger.

当人们被迫彼此孤立时，他们是否渴望社交互动？为了解决这个问题，我们使用功能性磁共振成像来测量参与者（n = 40) 经历了 10 小时的强制禁食或完全社会孤立。隔离后，人们感到孤独，渴望社交。中脑区域对禁食后的食物线索和隔离后的社交线索表现出选择性激活；这些反应与自我报告的渴望相关。相比之下，纹状体和皮质区域区分渴望食物和渴望社交互动。在剥夺会议中，我们发现剥夺缩小并集中大脑对被剥夺目标的动机反应。我们的结果支持了一个直观的观点，即急性孤立会导致社交渴望，类似于禁食导致饥饿的方式。