According to a new study, the size of a part of the brain is linked to the number of friends a person has on Facebook. The study from University College London showed that people with a higher number of Facebook friends have denser grey matter in certain regions of the brain. This linking may indicate that social networking sites are altering people’s brains.
These brain regions are linked with creating memories of names and faces and also how one interprets social cues such as body movements. The study indicates people’s brains are getting affected by social networking sites or that people born with these kinds of brains behave in a different manner on Facebook.
"Social networks exist in many forms - in the real world, in cyberspace and in many other forms. They are a particular aspect of human behaviour that surrounds and affects many aspects of how we live our daily lives", study author Geraint Rees said.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging and created brain scans of 125 young college students at the University College London. The team compared the sizes of various brain regions with the number of the participant’s number of Facebook friends and friends in real life. The team also studied a separate group of 40 students and found a strong link between between the number of Facebook friends and the amount of "grey matter" in the amygdale.
The study was reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
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