Large-Scale Neuroimaging and Genetic Analyses of the Human Thalamus in Loneliness
Verónica Mäki-Marttunen, Uta Sailer, Jakub Kopal, Espen Hagen, Alexey Shadrin, Ole A Andreassen, Linn Nilsen Rødevand, Torbjørn Elvsåshagen · 2026
Read Large-Scale Neuroimaging and Genetic Analyses of the Human Thalamus in Loneliness by Verónica Mäki-Marttunen, Uta Sailer, Jakub Kopal, Espen Hagen, Alexey Shadrin, Ole A Andreassen, Linn Nilsen Rødevand, Torbjørn Elvsåshagen (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13571574.txt.
Description
Verónica Mäki-Marttunen and co-authors combine, in a 2026 study of UK Biobank data, brain scans from nearly forty-six thousand adults with genetic analysis. Their question is how loneliness relates to the thalamus, the brain's sensory relay station. Volumes of thalamic subregions were compared by self-reported loneliness and social isolation.
Lonely participants had smaller whole thalamus volumes and smaller medial, lateral, and rear subregions. Being isolated without feeling lonely showed no such shrinkage, separating the feeling from the circumstance. Genetic analysis found shared genetic locations between thalamus size and loneliness in the wider biobank population. The results support a real role for this relay structure in social experience.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Verónica Mäki-Marttunen, Uta Sailer, Jakub Kopal, Espen Hagen, Alexey Shadrin, Ole A Andreassen, Linn Nilsen Rødevand, Torbjørn Elvsåshagen |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 39 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |