The next time your parents tell you to, “Get off Facebook!” at the dinner table, you will have a more neuroscientifically plausible response, “I’m working on expanding the amount of grey matter in my right entorhinal cortex!” … or not?
Facebook has become the epicenter of social networking. With more than 800 million active users worldwide, “friending” an old classmate from preschool and swapping pictures seems quicker, easier, and more interactive than planning out a reunion only to find yourself once again going your separate ways at the end of the night.
Reuters has published a bold new article titled, “More Facebook friends linked to bigger brain areas.” The article goes on to propose that the number of online friends a person has may affect the size of certain regions of the brain. The focus of this article is whether the internet will change the structure of the human brain over time. Ryota Kanai, a researcher from the University College London, and colleagues used MRI to examine the brains of students. In their study they used 125 students who were active Facebook users. They went on to cross – check their data with 40 other students later on. In their research they found that the amount of friends a person had on Facebook strongly suggested a connection with the grey matter of four regions in the brain: the amygdala, the right superior temporal sulcus, the right entorhinal cortex, and the left middle temporal gyrus.
However, they also found that the thickness of the grey matter when it came to the amygdala was also related to “real – world” friends. Although, the other three brain regions were linked to the “online” friendships. Typically the students in their research varied in the number of friends each one had from roughly 300 to upwards of 1,000.
There is still more research to be done in relation to social networking and the brain and with all of this research it is still not clear whether a person is “hard – wired” to be more social. Heidi Johansen Berg, a researcher not involved in the study from the University of Oxford, said, “If you got yourself 100 new Facebook friends today then your brain would not be bigger tomorrow.”
Despite the controversy and the on-going dilemma of the goodness or evil of modern – day technology, it is good to know that perhaps we can begin to be a little more “guilt – free” while expanding our friend circles on Facebook!
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/19/uk-science-facebook-idUSLNE79I02020111019
I must say that I'm a bit skeptical. I'm a firm believer in changing morphology of the brain but how can it change so quickly?Additionally, isn't grey matter supporting structures like glia and astrocytes etc. So perhaps these regions are just getting so much use now, that they need increased support by the machinery of glia and the like. Just a thought. I'd be interested to see the original article, could you send it my way? dklein1@luc.edu. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that you have commented on. I don't agree with this article but instead was more surprised that Reuters would publish this new "scientific" data. I just summarized the article and the link is on the bottom of the article (right above your comment). http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/19/uk-science-facebook-idUSLNE79I02020111019
ReplyDeleteI absolutely hate using facebook, and I agree with David in his skepticism. I think that all this research is just to assuage our new "social" fad. Hopefully the more extensive research will show that whatever reaction the brain has to being an "online socialite" will prove to not be a direct result of using social media sources.
ReplyDeleteIts funny it shows correlation with facebook friends than real world friends! "Maybe this suggests, that people try to compensate the lack of real friendships with online friendships?"
ReplyDeleteI think this reuters article is a great example of how correlation doesn't mean causation. It seems more that the two are related, but I highly doubt facebook is expanding grey matter in the way they would like to hope. I also like David's idea that maybe its an increase in support cells because those neurons are overused, but whether this activity leads to improved performance is hand waving at best.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely have to agree with what everyone has already said. It wouldn't make sense for the amount of friends you have on facebook to be affecting the size of your brain regions because this is making the assumption that the friends you have on facebook, are actually people you talk to on a regular basis. We have to keep in mind that there are people on facebook that just add everyone that goes to Loyola, and this wouldn't make their brain any bigger or smaller.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a bit of a skeptic of this study. Many people have a lot of friends on Facebook. But how many of these people do they actually know or talk to? Some people add people, just to add them. And then never talk to them again. I'd have to agree with Piotr in saying this is a great example of how correlation does not mean causation.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty much ALWAYS on facebook and I can say from experience that I have a lot of people on facebook that I do not talk to on a regular basis. It's interesting to see that they find a correlation with the amount of facebook friends one person has and the amount of grey matter they have. As others mentioned, some people add others just because they know of them but do not know them personally.
ReplyDeleteWhile an interesting article, the correlation does seem faulty. I have over 1,00 friends on facebook, however I do not talk to even half of them on a regular (or irregular) basis. Likewise, most people on facebook never even encounter, chat, message or poke most of their facebook "friends". So, I definitely agree that there is a weak correlation.
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