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By Helen Briggs Health editor, BBC News website
Social network sites may be changing people's brains as well as their social
life, research suggests.
Brain scans show a direct link between the number of Facebook friends a person
has and the size of certain parts of their brain.
It's not clear whether using social networks boosts grey matter or if those
with certain brain structures are good at making friends, say researchers.
The regions involved have roles in social interaction, memory and autism.
The work, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Biological Sciences, looked at 3-D brain scans of 125 university students from
London.
Grey matter
Researchers counted the number of Facebook friends each volunteer had, as well
as assessing the size of their network of real friends.
A strong link was found between the number of Facebook friends a person had and
the amount of grey matter in certain parts of their brain.
Start Quote
We cannot escape the ubiquity of the internet and its impact on our lives, yet
we understand little of its impact on the brain, which we know is plastic and
can change over time
Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust
The study also showed that the number of Facebook friends a person was in touch
with was reflected in the number of "real-world" friends.
"We have found some interesting brain regions that seem to link to the number
of friends we have - both 'real' and 'virtual'," said Dr Ryota Kanai, one of
the researchers from University College London.
"The exciting question now is whether these structures change over time. This
will help us answer the question of whether the internet is changing our
brains."
One region involved is the amygdala, which is associated with memory and
emotional responses.
Previous research has shown a link between the volume of grey matter in the
amygdala and the size and complexity of real world social networks. Grey matter
is the brain tissue where mental processing takes place.
Three other areas of the brain were linked with the size of someone's online
social network but not their tally of real-world friends.
'Plastic' brain
The right superior temporal sulcus has a role in perception and may be impaired
in autism. The left middle temporal gyrus is associated with "reading" social
cues, while the third - the right entorhinal complex - is thought to be
important in memory and navigation.
The data
Volunteers were asked questions such as: How many friends are in your
phonebook? How many friends have you kept from school and university? How many
people would you invite to a party? How many friends do you have on Facebook?
These questions led to an estimation of someone's social network size
Professor Geraint Rees, from UCL, who led the research, said little is
understood about the impact of social networks on the brain, which has led to
speculation the internet is somehow bad for us.
"Our study will help us begin to understand how our interactions with the world
are mediated through social networks," he said.
"This should allow us to start asking intelligent questions about the
relationship between the internet and the brain - scientific questions, not
political ones."
Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, has more than 800
million active users around the world. The site allows people to keep in touch
with networks of friends that vary greatly in size, from just a handful to more
than a thousand.
Commenting on the study, Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental
Health at the Wellcome Trust, said: "We cannot escape the ubiquity of the
internet and its impact on our lives, yet we understand little of its impact on
the brain, which we know is plastic and can change over time.
"This new study illustrates how well-designed investigations can help us begin
to understand whether or not our brains are evolving as they adapt to the
challenges posed by social media."
The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust.