As society continues to grapple with the public health issue of loneliness, researchers have recently found a “surprising” outcome after studying the way loneliness could affect memory in older adults. While loneliness may have a significant impact on memory, it might not affect how fast memory declines over time, according to a study published in the Aging and Mental Health journal last week.
In a longitudinal analysis, researchers evaluated a total of 10,217 participants aged 65 and older from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) from 12 countries over six years. Researchers sought to investigate how loneliness impacted memory in older adults.
The participants self-reported whether they experienced high loneliness, average loneliness or low loneliness at the study’s outset; none of the participants initially had a history of cognitive decline. Researchers found that participants who reported high loneliness had a significantly lower initial performance when their memories were assessed, compared to those who reported average or low loneliness. Reporting high loneliness, however, did not speed up their rate of decline in memory scores over time.
Dr. Luis Carlos Venegas-Sanabria, the lead author of the study from Universidad del Rosario in Colombia, said that the outcome of the study was “surprising.”
“The finding that loneliness significantly impacted memory, but not the speed of decline in memory over time was a surprising outcome,” he said in a news release. “It suggests that loneliness may play a more prominent role in the initial state of memory than in its progressive decline.”
In one task to assess the participants’ memory performance, they were presented with a 10-word list that was read aloud and then immediately asked to recall as many words as possible within one minute. Then they were asked to recall words from a 10-word list after five minutes. During the five minutes, participants were given unrelated information to prevent them from rehearsing the word list.
The study found that while the high loneliness group initially showed poorer memory performance, their rate of decline over time was similar to that of the participants in the other groups.
“Interestingly, the baseline level of loneliness does not affect the rate of long-term cognitive decline,” the study states. “This suggests that loneliness may have a greater impact on the initial state of memory rather than on facilitating progressive decline.”
But researchers noted other key findings about the group that initially reported high loneliness. Those participants were more commonly older, female, and had worse self-rated health. They also had a higher prevalence of depression, high blood pressure and diabetes.
Furthermore, the study authors noted that other factors affected participants’ baseline memory performances more significantly than their level of loneliness did. These factors included age, depression, reported health status and engagement in physical or social activities.
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Researchers found that the participants who reported experiencing high loneliness showed a significantly lower initial memory performance, but that loneliness did not affect the rate of decline in memory scores among all the participants over time.
The study had several limitations, the authors noted. For starters, it viewed loneliness as a stable variable that did not change over time. Also, participants self-reported their level of engagement in physical or social activity, which can introduce bias, among other limitations.
Previous research has found links between loneliness and increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia. The authors note that past findings between loneliness and its association with dementia risk have been “inconsistent.” “Future longitudinal research is needed to examine how changes in loneliness and social isolation relate to patterns of cognitive change and how other covariates may modify this relationship,” the study states.
Jordan Weiss, an associate professor at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and a scientific writer at Assisted Living Magazine, cautioned that the results of the new study may be easy to “misread.”
Weiss, who was not involved in the study, told Fox News that it can be hard to detect how soon social connection patterns affect memory if you’re studying people who are already in their 60s.
“By the time you’re measuring someone in their late 60s, decades of social connection patterns are already baked in,” he said.
Chronic loneliness has been linked to several health issues, including dementia, heart disease, depression, anxiety, Type 2 diabetes and an increased risk of stroke.
Brian Mullan, a licensed professional counselor with Thriveworks in Philadelphia, previously emphasized to HuffPost that it’s important to remember that we are “social animals, literally from birth.”
“It’s an innate, hardwired need we humans have,” he said.
Mullan recommended that people looking to address feelings of loneliness “explore resources in the community that are either free, or very low cost or local to you.”
He recommended finding activities you’re already interested in.
“Maybe things that you have always wanted to explore, but felt constrained from, I think that’s one great place to start,” he said.
