Too social on social network?? Have more friends on Facebook than in real life?? Well that shows how denser the “grey matter” in your brain is. An interesting study claims the existence of a relationship between number of Facebook pals and a “grey matter” present in brain. The study points to the possibility of people’s minds being modified by social networking websites.
The regions of the human brain containing grey matter are associated with creation of memories such as names, faces and the way one interprets social cues such as stares, gestures and expressions. Researchers hailing from University College London, after observing the density trend of “grey matter” with Facebook friends in about 40 college students, concluded that both have a direct relation.
As stated in their findings published in the journal proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the team is of the opinion that either these websites alter the human brain or people having different densities of this matter behave differently in the cyber world. Study author Geraint Rees observed that social networks have different forms, ranging from day to day to social interactions in offices schools and home to virtual meetings on Facebook, Twitter and Google plus. Our way of leading our lives is affected from certain aspects of our behaviours.
The experiment was done by taking into consideration the brain development of 125 college students. Brains were scanned by using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology. A comparison was done between the sizes of the students’ brains and the number of friends they had on Facebook as well as in real life. A direct link was found between their Facebook friends and the grey matter present in various parts of the brain such as amygdala, the right superior temporal sulcus; the left middle temporal gyrus and the right entorhinal cortex.
Amygdala’s matter was showing trends with the real life friends too but the other three regions were linked to the virtual world friends only.
It is still to be figured out that whether the social sites have a tendency to alter human brain or is it the inbuilt proportion of the matter present in it which governs our online connections.