[Photo by Felipe Bastos/Flickr]
People between 45 and 65 may be the loneliest segment in the U.S. And researchers are using brain scans to show that friendships are vital to staying healthy and engaged in your middle years.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
At some point, most people feel lonely. But according to some surveys, the middle years are the loneliest period of life. Feeling isolated is also dangerous and it can be fatal. As journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty found for our series on midlife, keeping up with friends at that point in life is one of the best things one can do to stay healthy, both mentally and physically.
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY: On a cold, wet Monday morning, my friend Cherie Harder and I arrive at the University of Virginia's neuroscience laboratory in Charlottesville, Va. Casey Brown, the project coordinator for the lab, leads us to the basement where a brain scanner is being prepped. She asks us to remove our socks and roll up a pant leg each. Then she clamps on anklets that will deliver electric shocks. It's no big deal she says.
[For more go to http://www.npr.org/2016/03/16/...onger-healthier-life]
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