No Man is an Island! Loneliness Could Increase Dementia.

http://www.livescience.com/25446-loneliness-feelings-dementia-risk.html 

According to a new study, people who feel lonely are at higher risk of developing dementia. the study followed 2,200 healthy people ages 65 to 86 for three years. The results suggested that dementia could be advanced both by psychological and physical loneliness. In one survey, lonely people were 1.64 times more likely to develop to develop dementia, where 13.4 percent of those who reported feeling lonely went on to develop dementia over the next three years, while only 5.7 percent of those who reported no lonely feelings developed dementia. Because subjects only reported that they felt lonely, these specific findings suggest that a perceived absence of social attachments can be a psychological cause of increase dementia risk. The researchers did not have an exact explanation of this relationship, but said that it could be because feeling lonely leads to a lack of stimulation.  

The study also found that 9.3 percent of subjects living alone developed dementia, whereas only 5.6 percent of those living with at least one other person developed. Also, of the subjects who were not or no longer married, 9.2 percent developed dementia, compared to only 5.3 percent of married people. Whether the loneliness was psychological or physical, there is still a common possible explanation for the dementia. Memories are strengthened during long-term potentiation (LTP), where synaptic strength is increased when successive neurons along a neuron pathway are activated. If a person is not regularly stimulated by conversation or interaction, nothing will be triggering those neuron pathways, causing cognitive decline.

What are your thoughts? Do you buy into the study's findings that dementia can increase merely based on a person feeling lonely?