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people with a lot of Facebook friends have more gray matter density in the three regions of the brain, according to a study

The brains of people with a large number of Facebook friends are different from those with fewer connections online, neuroscientists say.

researchers at University College London found that users with the most friends on the social network had more gray matter in brain regions associated with social skills. The finding suggests that social networks or changes in these brain regions, or those born with this type of information behave differently on sites like Facebook.

In August, Baroness Susan Greenfield, a former director of the Royal Institution, made the controversial suggestion that the increased use of digital technology may be responsible for the increasing number of people diagnosed with of autism spectrum disorders. The researchers said their work did not directly address these issues, but helped to show how future studies could be designed to do.

"Social networks are ubiquitous in human society," said study leader Professor Geraint Rees, director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, whose study was published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the B. Royal Society

"A key issue for discussion in contemporary societies with social networks is to make people use the same or to allow a completely different type of communication and interaction than ever possible? "Rees says. "People are worried about whether it is in no way affect or change the brain or how we interact with the world."

said it was impossible to say whether the results are included some of the brain are wired social network or have a large number of friends on Facebook changes brain structure. "What we're trying to do is get a handful of empirically using data types that can be generated to try to start the rolling process."

density of gray matter
in another region of the brain, the amygdala, correlated with the number known to both the real and Facebook.

compare different species of primates, researchers have demonstrated a correlation between the volume of the neocortex, the part of the brain largely responsible for higher functions such as language and thought, and the size of social group.
anthropologist Professor Robin Dunbar , Oxford University, proposed that the number of people that humans can maintain a stable relationship is limited by the size of our neocortex from an average of about 150. The concept later became known as "Dunbar number".

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