Have a lot of Facebook friends? Your brain has more grey matter too — If you've got a ton of Facebook friends, your friend count isn't all you've got to brag about — you might actually have a superior brain too. According to a new study comparing groups of people with many Facebook friends versus those with only a handful, the former group of social media socialites actually has more grey matter in the areas of the brain implicated in social skills. Grey matter is packed with neuronal cell bodies, in contrast to white matter, which primarily contains the tendrils that transmit signals from neuron to neuron.
In the study, conducted by University College London's cognitive neuroscience department, the researchers used MRI scans to get a structural image of each volunteer's brain. The 165 participants were also asked to fill out a questionnaire to tally up both how many "real world" and Facebook friends they had. The form included questions like "How many were present at your 18th or 21st birthday party?" and "What is the total number of friends in your phonebook?".
A new study suggests a correlation between Facebook friend counts and structural brain differences
Interestingly, extra grey matter correlated only to a high Facebook friend count and not a high real world friend count in three brain areas: the superior temporal sulcus, the middle temporal gyrus, and the entorhinal cortex. The first two parts of the brain are social hotspots, known to play a role in how we perceive social cues from facial expressions — a crucial social skill. The entorhinal cortex contributes to the human brain's ability to recognize and distinguish faces. In the amygdala, both real world and Facebook social butterflies were stocked with more grey matter.
While the study is intriguing, it's also preliminary. A relationship between Facebook friendliness and grey matter in these key brain areas exists, but it's impossible to say if having those extra neurons is actually the direct cause of the high friend count. Still, it's fascinating that many of these hyper-social areas of the brain correlated with online friend counts, but didn't seem to play a role in the non-virtual social world. ( Today in Tech )
In the study, conducted by University College London's cognitive neuroscience department, the researchers used MRI scans to get a structural image of each volunteer's brain. The 165 participants were also asked to fill out a questionnaire to tally up both how many "real world" and Facebook friends they had. The form included questions like "How many were present at your 18th or 21st birthday party?" and "What is the total number of friends in your phonebook?".
A new study suggests a correlation between Facebook friend counts and structural brain differences
Interestingly, extra grey matter correlated only to a high Facebook friend count and not a high real world friend count in three brain areas: the superior temporal sulcus, the middle temporal gyrus, and the entorhinal cortex. The first two parts of the brain are social hotspots, known to play a role in how we perceive social cues from facial expressions — a crucial social skill. The entorhinal cortex contributes to the human brain's ability to recognize and distinguish faces. In the amygdala, both real world and Facebook social butterflies were stocked with more grey matter.
While the study is intriguing, it's also preliminary. A relationship between Facebook friendliness and grey matter in these key brain areas exists, but it's impossible to say if having those extra neurons is actually the direct cause of the high friend count. Still, it's fascinating that many of these hyper-social areas of the brain correlated with online friend counts, but didn't seem to play a role in the non-virtual social world. ( Today in Tech )
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