More Facebook friends linked with bigger brains?

More Facebook friends linked with bigger brains???

A study found that the number of Facebook friends you have is linked to the size of the parts of your brain that process social perception.

UK researchers found people had bigger, denser structures in three areas of the brain if they had a big list of Facebook friends compared to those who had few online friends, The Advertiser reported.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed this reliably predicted grey matter density in the right superior temporal sulcus, left middle temporal gyrus and entorhinal cortex.

University College London researcher Ryota Kanai said the first two areas were associated with social perception such as perceiving other people's gaze or social cues from facial expressions.

"(The third) might be associated with memory for faces and names," he said.

The researchers used a 3D scanner to look at the brains of 125 university students. Their Facebook friends varied in number from a handful to nearly 1000.

UCL Professor of Neuroscience Geraint Rees, who led the research, said that bigger did not necessarily mean better.

"So we don't know yet the exact relationship, whether more (grey matter with online networking) is good or not, and we don't know yet the exact cellular constituents, the exact type of nerve cell and what exactly is happening," he said.

"That's really for future research."

Source: adelaidenow.com.au