Many lifestyle and psychosocial factors are associated with a longer lifespan; central among these is social connectedness, or the feeling of belongingness, identification, and bond as part of meaningful human relationships. Decades of research have established that social connectedness is related not only to better mental health (e.g., less loneliness and depression) but also to improved physical health (e.g., decreased inflammatory markers, reduced cortisol activity). Recent methodological advances allow for the investigation of a novel marker of biological health by deriving a predicted "age of the brain" from a structural neuroimaging scan. Discrepancies between a person's algorithm-predicted brain-age and chronological age (i.e., the brain-age gap) have been found to predict mortality and psychopathology risk with accuracy rivaling other known measures of aging. This preregistered investigation uses the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study to examine connections between the quality of social connections, the brain-age gap, and markers of mortality risk to understand the longevity-promoting associations of social connectedness from a novel biological vantage point. While social connectedness was associated with markers of mortality risk (number of chronic conditions and ability to perform activities of daily living), our models did not find significant links between social connectedness and the brain-age gap, or the brain-age gap and mortality risk. Supplemental and sensitivity analyses suggest alternate approaches to investigating these associations and overcoming limitations. While plentiful evidence underscores that being socially connected is good for the mind, future research should continue to consider whether it impacts neural markers of aging and longevity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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探索社会联系、死亡风险和大脑年龄之间的联系：一项预先注册的研究。


许多生活方式和社会心理因素都与更长的寿命有关；其中的核心是社会联系，或者作为有意义的人际关系一部分的归属感、认同感和联系感。数十年的研究已经证实，社会联系不仅与更好的心理健康（例如，更少的孤独和抑郁）有关，而且还与改善的身体健康（例如，减少炎症标志物、减少皮质醇活性）有关。最近的方法论进展允许通过从结构神经影像扫描中得出预测的“大脑年龄”来研究生物健康的新标志。人们发现，算法预测的大脑年龄与实际年龄（即大脑年龄差距）之间的差异可以预测死亡率和精神病理学风险，其准确性可与其他已知的衰老指标相媲美。这项预先注册的调查利用美国中年 (MIDUS) 研究来检验社会联系质量、大脑年龄差距和死亡风险标记之间的联系，以从新的生物学角度了解社会联系与促进长寿的关联观点。虽然社会联系与死亡风险标志（慢性病的数量和进行日常生活活动的能力）相关，但我们的模型没有发现社会联系与大脑年龄差距或大脑年龄差距与死亡率之间的显着联系风险。补充分析和敏感性分析提出了研究这些关联和克服局限性的替代方法。 虽然大量证据强调社交联系对大脑有益，但未来的研究应继续考虑它是否会影响衰老和长寿的神经标志物。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。