Associations of positive and negative social connections with brain health in UK Biobank data
Suraj Samtani, Gowsaly Mahalingam, Wei Wen, Henry Brodaty, Perminder S. Sachdev · 2025
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Description
Suraj Samtani and four co-authors study how good and bad social ties relate to brain health, in a 2025 analysis of UK Biobank data. Past work links rich social lives to healthier brains but mostly ignores harmful ties, such as violence or belittling by a partner. The team also looked at white matter, the brain's wiring, which earlier studies had skipped.
The analysis covered 5,704 adults with two rounds of brain scans. People with larger social networks lost less grey and white matter between scans. Living with more people also went with better preserved wiring. Partner violence, by contrast, went with faster worsening of a white matter wear marker. Loneliness alone showed no link to brain change in this sample.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Suraj Samtani, Gowsaly Mahalingam, Wei Wen, Henry Brodaty, Perminder S. Sachdev |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 3 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |