Social Media

Friend Count Linked to the Size of a Certain Body Part? [STUDY]


We're social animals, but some are more social than others. If a university study published this week is correct, the number of Facebook friends you have might be due to the size of a small part of your brain.

It's all in the size of your amygdalae, small almond-shaped portions of the brain nestled within the temporal lobe, say scientists who conducted the study using 58 participants. They concluded that the amygdala's size can predict just how social anyone will be, regardless of age or gender.

"We considered a single primate species, humans, and found that the amygdala volume positively correlated with the size and complexity of social networks in adult humans," says the leader of the study, Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a professor at Northwestern University,

Another one of the scientists conducting the study says its results are consistent with the "social brain hypothesis," the notion that the human brain evolved to adapt to increasingly complex social structures.

Could it be that all our extensive Facebooking and Twittering is causing our brains to evolve further? On the other hand, perhaps correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. After all, another study showed we're only capable of handling 150 Facebook friends anyway. Discuss.

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