Social Media

Facebook Friend Count Linked to Brain Density [STUDY]



That's the chicken-and-egg problem researchers at University College London are grappling with after finding a connection between brain structure and Facebook activity. The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was based on MRIs of a group of 165 adults who were asked to report the number of Facebook friends they have. (The study doesn't delineate what is considered "high," though it refers to Dunbar's Number, which postulates 150 friends is the limit of the average person's social circle.)



Professor Geraint Rees, director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, told The Guardian it's too early to tell how the structure of the brain and online social networking activity are connected. "What we're attempting to do is get an empirical handle using the types of data we can generate to try and start that process rolling."

Image courtesy of Flickr, Patrick Denker

Load Comments

What's New

What's Rising

What's Hot