Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast.

Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

Many of us felt a little lonely when we were stuck at home during the pandemic.

And did you know what may have changed your brain?

Feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact.

That's next.

Untangle the Mysteries of the Universe in the Quanta book, Alice and Bob Meet the Wall of Fire, published by the

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make sure to tell your friends about the Quantum Magazine Science podcast and give us a positive

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The Neumire 3 Polar Station sits near the edge of Antarctica's unforgiving extrome ice shelf. During the winter, temperatures can plunge below minus 50 degrees Celsius, and winds can climb

to more than 100 kilometers per hour.

No one can come or go from the station.

Its isolation is essential to the meteorological, atmospheric, and geophysical science experiments

conducted there.

But the handful of scientists who staffed the

station during the winter months have to endure its frigid loneliness. A few years ago, the station

became the site for a study of loneliness itself. A team of scientists in Germany wanted to see

whether the social isolation and environmental monotony

marked the brains of people making long Antarctic stays. Eight expeditioners working at the Neumire

3 station for 14 months agreed to have their brains scanned before and after their mission,

...