New research indicates that people who sleep poorly are more likely to suffer socially. A team at the University of California, Berkeley , (UC Berkeley) has found that sleep-deprived individual report feeling lonelier and less inclined to engage with others, and avoid close contact, similar to those who have social anxiety. This withdrawn, almost aloof vibe also makes the sleep-deprived less attractive to others.

And very oddly, the study found that well-rested people feel lonely after just a brief encounter with a sleep-deprived person, potentially triggering a viral contagion of social isolation. The study, published August 14 in Nature Communications, is billed as the first to show a two-way relationship between sleep loss and becoming socially isolated.

According to the study authors, brain scans of sleep-deprived people as they viewed video clips of strangers walking toward them showed powerful social repulsion activity in neural networks that are typically activated when humans feel their personal space is being invaded. Sleep loss also blunted activity in brain regions that normally encourage social engagement. “We humans are a social species. Yet sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers,” commented study senior author Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience. “The less sleep you get, the less you want to socially interact. In turn, other people perceive you as more socially repulsive, further increasing the grave social-isolation impact of sleep loss.”

Further, loneliness has been found to increase one’s risk of mortality by more than 45 percent— double the mortality risk associated with obesity. “It’s perhaps no coincidence that the past few decades have seen a marked increase in loneliness and an equally dramatic decrease in sleep duration,” said co-author Eti Ben Simon, a postdoctoral fellow in Walker’s Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley.

To gauge the social effects of poor sleep, Walker and Ben Simon conducted a series of intricate experiments using such tools as fMRI brain imaging, standardized loneliness measures, videotaped simulations and surveys via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) online marketplace.

The team tested the social and neural responses of 18 healthy young adults following a normal night’s sleep and after a sleepless night. The participants viewed video clips of individuals with neutral expressions walking toward them. When the person on the video got too close, they pushed a button to stop the video, which recorded how close they allowed the person to get. Unsurprisingly, when they were sleep deprived, participants kept the approaching person at a significantly greater distance away—between 18 and 60 percent further back—than when they had been well-rested.

Additionally, brain scans were conducted when participants viewed videos of individuals approaching them. In sleep-deprived brains, researchers found heightened activity in a neural circuit known as the “near space network,” which is activated when the brain perceives potential incoming human threats. Conversely, the “theory of mind” network in the brain that encourages social interaction was inert when sleep was deprived.

For the online study, more than 1,000 people recruited via AMT marketplace viewed videos of study participants discussing commonplace opinions and activities. Unaware that the individuals they were viewing were deprived of sleep, they overwhelmingly rated the sleep-bankrupt participants as lonelier and less socially desirable. Further, to test whether sleep-loss-induced alienation is contagious, researchers asked the AMT observers to rate their own levels of loneliness after watching the videos, and found that otherwise healthy individuals felt alienated after viewing just a 60-second clip of what they perceived to be a lonely person.

Further, the team found that the amount of sleep a person obtained from one night to the next accurately predicted how lonely and unsociable they would feel from one day to the next. “On a positive note, just one night of good sleep makes you feel more outgoing and socially confident, and furthermore, will attract others to you.” Walker said.

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