The Neurobiological Craving Signature (NCS) predicts social craving and responds to social isolation

Abstract

Humans are inherently social and seek connection with others for survival. Recent studies suggest that acute social isolation leads to craving for social interactions, but the brain mechanisms of social craving and their relationship to brain networks underlying drug and food craving remain incompletely understood. Here we harnessed an existing dataset and tested whether the Neurobiological Craving Signature (NCS)-a recently developed fMRI-based brain-signature of drug and food craving-also predicts social craving. During fMRI, participants rated their craving for images of food, social interactions, and flowers in three different sessions: after 10h of fasting from food, 10h of social isolation, or neither (baseline; order of sessions counterbalanced). The NCS significantly predicted self-reported craving for food and social cues but not flower cues. Further, NCS responses to food were higher after fasting compared to baseline, and higher for social cues after social isolation compared to baseline, demonstrating its responsiveness to both food and social deprivation. These findings resonate with recent work showing shared brainstem circuits for hunger and social isolation, and indicate shared whole-brain circuits for social, food, and drug craving. They open new avenues for testing the NCS across different primary rewards, for assessing the consequences of their deprivation, and for examining how social deprivation-such as loneliness and isolation-interacts with overeating and drug use.