Essentials: Science of Building Strong Social Bonds with Family, Friends & Romantic Partners

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode is about the biology, psychology and practices of social bonding. From the day we are born until the day we die, the quality of our social bonds dictates much of our quality of life. It should therefore be no surprise that our brain and indeed much of our entire nervous system is wired for social bonds. Today, we are going to talk about those brain and nervous system circuitries. We're also going to talk about the neurochemicals and hormones that underlie their function. And we are going to touch on a number of important and actionable tools that you can apply in everyday life. And I'm confident that you will come away from today's episode with tremendous knowledge about how you function. For instance, if you're an introvert or an extrovert, why is that? Turns out there may be a neurochemical basis for that. Believe it or not, there's biology around that now, and it's excellent peer-reviewed work. Now, an important feature of biology generally, but in particular as it relates to social bonding, is that the neural circuits, meaning the brain areas and neurons and the hormones, things like oxytocin, which we'll talk about today, and the other chemicals in the brain and body that are responsible for the process we call social bonding, are not unique to particular social bonds. They are generic. What I mean by that is that the same brain circuits that are responsible for establishing a bond between parent and child are actually repurposed in romantic relationships. Before we talk about social bonding, I want to talk about its mirror image, which is lack of social bonding or social isolation. Well, many people like time alone, but when we talk about social isolation, what we're referring to is when animals or humans are restricted from having the social context that they would prefer to have. And to just briefly touch on the major takeaways from this literature, which spans back a hundred years or more, being socially isolated is stressful. And one of the hallmark features of social isolation is chronically elevated stress hormones, like adrenaline, also called epinephrine, like cortisol, a stress hormone that at healthy levels is good for combating inflammation, helps us have energy early in the day, focused throughout the day. But if cortisol is elevated for too long, which is the consequence of social isolation, the immune system suffers and other chemicals start to be released in the brain and body that are designed to motivate the organism, animal or human to seek out social bonds. So if you're somebody who's socially isolated and is craving social contact, that is a healthy craving. And as we'll learn next, the healthy craving for social contact has a very specific brain circuit, has a very specific neurochemical signature associated with it, and has some remarkable features that you can leverage in social contacts of all kinds. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium in the correct amounts, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. 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If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman, spelled drinklmnt.com/huberman, to claim a free Element sample pack with a purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman, to claim a free sample pack. Much like hunger, much like temperature, much like thirst, we have brain circuits that are devoted to what's called a social homeostasis. Homeostasis is the characteristic of various biological circuits and even individual cells to try and maintain a certain level. It's most easily thought of in the context of hunger. If you don't eat for a while, you're drive to pursue food and think about food and make food and spend money on food. And indeed, to enjoy food goes up. Whereas when you're well fed, you don't tend to seek out food with as much vigor or as much intensity. So that's a simple way of thinking about homeostasis. Every homeostatic circuit has three components or at least three. One is a detector, meaning the organism or the thermostat on your wall has to have some way of detecting what's going on in the environment, all right? In the context of social bonding, whether or not you are interacting with others and whether or not those interactions are going well. So that has to be detected. That's the first thing. Then there has to be a control center. That's the second thing. And the control center is the one that makes the adjustments to, in the case of social bonding, to your behavior and to your psychology. Now the third component of this homeostatic circuit is the effector. The effector is actually what drives the behavioral response. It's what leads you to pick up your social media and start scrolling. It's what leads you to text a friend. So again, those three components are a detector, a control center and an effector. And as you'll soon learn, the neural circuit that controls this social homeostasis actually has a fourth component. And that fourth component is one that places subjective understanding as to why you are doing what you were doing and establishes your place in a hierarchy. When we talk about social hierarchies in the context of human interactions, social hierarchies are very plastic, meaning in one setting, one person can be the leader. In another setting, the other person can be the leader. Hierarchies are very dynamic. And as a consequence, social bonding has to be very plastic and very fluid so that you move from one environment to the next, even with the same people, you have to be able to make those adjustments. And in the case of the social homeostasis circuit, those adjustments are made by a particular brain structure. I've talked about it in this podcast before. It's called the prefrontal cortex. It is the seat of our higher consciousness, if you will. It's what allows us to place subjective labels on things. So we are not strictly input output. We are not robotic. The detector that underlies social homeostasis involves mainly two structures. One is called the ACC, the anterior cingulate cortex. And the other is the BLA, basolateral amygdala. And when you hear the word amygdala, you're probably thinking fear. But today, as you'll see, the amygdala actually has many different sub compartments and components. And there's a reason why the basolateral amygdala, which is associated with certain aspects of aversive behaviors, meaning moving away from certain types of things or interactions. There's a reason why the BLA is such an integral part of the detector system. And that's because just as it's important to form healthy social bonds, it's vitally important to try and avoid unhealthy social bonds. So we've got the ACC and the BLA. These are areas that are mainly involved in moving away from things, although also toward them. That's the detector. Then we've got the control center, which is in the hypothalamus. And then there's a very special and important area associated with social bonding that I want everyone to learn, which is the dorsal raphe nucleus or DRN, dorsal raphe nucleus. The dorsal raphe nucleus is a small collection of neurons in the midbrain. So it's deep in the brain.