how connection developsWhat happens in you when someone’s company begins to feel familiar, welcome, and worth seeking out?
You may recognize the change before you have words for it. There is someone you want to tell about your day, someone whose response you look forward to, someone you begin to make room for. Understanding social bonding means looking more closely at that movement toward another person and at what happens when you spend time together.
In his December 2021 Huberman Lab episode on social bonding, Andrew Huberman approaches attachment as a biological process that develops across family relationships, friendships, and romantic life (07:08).
The desire for contact
At 13:32, Huberman introduces social homeostasis, a model for understanding how we regulate our need for contact.
In their 2019 review, neuroscientists Gillian Matthews and Kay Tye propose that the brain monitors the quantity and quality of social experience, registers when it differs from an individual’s needs, and helps organize a response. A wish to seek company could be part of that response. The model connects animal research with questions about human social experience. It remains a framework researchers are investigating.
Quality belongs in this account alongside quantity. A full calendar and a satisfying social life are different things to measure. The authors also allow for social needs to vary with personal history and changing circumstances. That leaves room for your enjoyment of solitude and your desire for company to have their own rhythms. The useful question is how the contact available to you fits the contact you want.
The review describes dopamine neurons that become more active when isolated mice encounter another mouse. Such findings help researchers investigate the motivation to seek contact, a role for dopamine that Huberman explores at 22:48.
Huberman turns to a human experiment on social craving at 38:05.
In Livia Tomova and colleagues’ 2020 study, 40 adults experienced ten hours of social isolation and, on a separate occasion, ten hours of fasting. Researchers then examined their responses to images of social activity and food. After isolation, participants reported wanting social interaction. Midbrain responses to social images resembled, in part, the responses to food images after fasting. Stronger reported craving was associated with stronger responses.
The comparison gives the desire for company a recognizable place among human motivations. In this experiment, deprivation focused attention on what was missing. The brain measurements came from functional MRI, which tracks changes in blood oxygenation associated with activity. They did not directly measure dopamine or establish that hunger and loneliness are identical. What the experiment showed was that a period without contact could make social contact especially compelling.
Becoming absorbed in the same experience
At 45:05, Huberman explores shared attention through research on stories and heart rhythms.
In Pauline Pérez and colleagues’ 2021 study, participants listened to a passage from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea while researchers recorded their hearts. As the story unfolded, changes in heart rate showed similarities across listeners, even though they listened individually. A common story could organize aspects of their bodily responses.
Across further experiments, attention mattered. People who watched educational videos while distracted showed less synchronization. Greater synchronization during another listening task was associated with better recall. Here, synchrony meant related fluctuations over time, rather than everyone’s heart beating at the same speed.
The experiments measured engagement with a narrative. They did not test whether the listeners developed affection for one another. That distinction preserves what is interesting in the finding. Before you even exchange impressions, attending to the same unfolding experience can give your bodies something in common.
Huberman suggests shared stories and activities as possible occasions for bonding (45:05). A film, for example, also gives you something specific to talk about afterward. You can discover which moment stayed with the other person, what surprised them, or why a character’s choice made sense to them. The shared experience becomes an opening for learning something particular about each other.
Learning to respond to another person
Huberman’s discussion of early attachment begins at 53:54, bringing attention to the bodily exchanges within caregiving.
A study by Ruth Feldman and colleagues offers a close view of those exchanges. Researchers observed 40 mothers playing face to face with their three-month-old infants while recording both partners’ heart rhythms. They also tracked gaze, facial expression, and vocal interaction.
Mother and infant showed brief coordination in their cardiac rhythms. This coordination was stronger during moments when their emotional expressions or vocal behavior were synchronized. Ordinary social signals were accompanied by measurable patterns in the body.
It is a small window into early relationships, drawn from three minutes of play. Its value here is the detail it makes visible. Before a baby can explain an experience, interaction already includes looking, sounding, responding, and pausing. The mother and child participate in an exchange that has both a social and a physiological dimension.
The chemistry of rewarding company
At 1:10:40, Huberman discusses oxytocin’s involvement in social bonding.
One way to understand its contribution is to look at how social experience becomes rewarding. In a 2013 experiment, Gül Dölen and colleagues studied whether mice developed a preference for a setting they associated with social contact. Normally, they did. Blocking oxytocin receptors in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens prevented that learned preference under the study’s conditions.
The researchers also found that serotonin signaling was necessary for the effect. Oxytocin was working within a system of interacting signals, helping social experience acquire rewarding significance.
This experiment identifies one mechanism of social reward in mice. It gives researchers a way to investigate how social experience affects the brain. Human closeness also involves a particular person, a history, and the meaning you give your time together. Understanding the biology adds another dimension to that experience.
Feeling with someone and understanding them
At 1:06:10, Huberman distinguishes emotional empathy from cognitive empathy, bringing the discussion to how people understand each other.
Sharing someone’s feeling and making sense of their perspective draw on distinguishable capacities. In a 2016 study, Philipp Kanske and colleagues examined both in 178 adults. Participants watched people recount personal experiences, reported their own emotional responses, and answered questions requiring them to infer what the speaker thought or intended.
A strong emotional response did not reliably go together with greater accuracy in understanding another person’s mental state. Behavioral results and brain activity supported a distinction between the two capacities. Feeling moved by someone’s experience and understanding it accurately could vary independently.
You might feel someone’s disappointment immediately and still have something to learn about what the occasion meant to them. You might understand their excitement while your own feelings are quieter.
A friend’s excitement about a new job might draw you in. As they talk, you could discover that what matters most is having evenings with their children. Their explanation makes the news more personal.
Sources
Huberman, A. (2021, December 20). Science of Social Bonding in Family, Friendship & Romantic Love. Huberman Lab, episode 51. Episode and transcript.
Matthews, G. A., & Tye, K. M. (2019). Neural mechanisms of social homeostasis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1457(1), 5–25.
Tomova, L., et al. (2020). Acute social isolation evokes midbrain craving responses similar to hunger. Nature Neuroscience, 23, 1597–1605. Author correction published in 2022.
Pérez, P., et al. (2021). Conscious processing of narrative stimuli synchronizes heart rate between individuals. Cell Reports, 36(11), 109692.
Feldman, R., Magori-Cohen, R., Galili, G., Singer, M., & Louzoun, Y. (2011). Mother and infant coordinate heart rhythms through episodes of interaction synchrony. Infant Behavior and Development, 34(4), 569–577.
Dölen, G., Darvishzadeh, A., Huang, K. W., & Malenka, R. C. (2013). Social reward requires coordinated activity of nucleus accumbens oxytocin and serotonin. Nature, 501, 179–184.
Kanske, P., Böckler, A., Trautwein, F.-M., Parianen Lesemann, F. H., & Singer, T. (2016). Are strong empathizers better mentalizers? Evidence for independence and interaction between the routes of social cognition. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(9), 1383–1392.