🧠🤝 Many senior leaders tell me they feel “fine” socially…but their diaries tell a different story. 🤝🧠

We often assume that loneliness is the real risk to brain health…that how you feel about connection matters most.

The neuroscience is quietly saying otherwise and with Xmas nearly on us🎅it’s a great time to reach out and reconnect with people and start the change TODAY!

Reframe

A major misconception is that as long as someone doesn’t feel lonely, they’re protected.But social connection isn’t just emotional… it’s behavioural.

And behaviour is what the brain responds to.

What the science shows

A large longitudinal study from the University of St Andrews analysed over 137,000 cognitive assessments across 14 years.

The findings were clear and consistent:

👉 Objective social isolation was causally linked to faster cognitive decline

👉 This effect was independent of loneliness

👉 Only ~6% of the effect operated through feeling lonely

👉 The association held across gender, ethnicity, and education

In simple terms:

Less social contact → faster brain decline…even if someone says they’re “doing OK”.

(Hale et al., 2025, The Journals of Gerontology Series B - https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/advance-article/doi/10.1093/geronb/gbaf254/8379737)

Mechanistically, regular social interaction stimulates multiple cognitive domains at once… attention, memory, executive function, emotional regulation. When that stimulation drops, neural resilience erodes over time.

What this means for real leaders

High performers are particularly vulnerable here.

Not because they lack people…but because sustained pressure quietly shrinks social bandwidth.

👉 Fewer shared meals

👉 Fewer community touchpoints

👉 Fewer low-stakes human interactions

The fix isn’t dramatic….small, protective shifts matter:

🔋 Schedule connection like recovery

🔋 Build non-transactional interactions into the week

🔋 Protect one recurring social anchor that isn’t work-adjacent

🔋 Design roles and cultures that reduce isolation, not just workload

This isn’t about being more social for its own sake.  It’s about protecting cognitive health across the lifespan.

Closing thought

We spend a lot of time talking about brain health in terms of sleep, exercise, and nutrition…but connection belongs on that list too.

Not as a “nice to have”… but as neurological scaffolding.

At @Essentio Health and @Build a Bridge – Live Your Best Life, we help leaders build systems where performance, connection, and longevity reinforce each other… sustainably.