pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36617781/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">older adults who are lonely are at greater risk for cognitive decline and conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Those studies, however, generally treated loneliness as a stable trait of someone's life, but loneliness fluctuates from day to day and even over the course of a single day. Across one or two days, momentary loneliness and cognitive performance seem to have a complex relationship that may reinforce one another, according to a new study from researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development.
The team found that cognitive performance worsened for older adults on days that they felt lonelier than usual as well as on the following day. They also found that when cognitive performance declined, loneliness increased a short time later. However, experiences of loneliness over the course of a single day did not relate to changes in cognitive performance.
Their findings were published in The Journals of Gerontology Series B.
