Psycologists have linked brain size to the number of friends an individual has.
Researchers are suggesting that there is a link between the number of friends you have and the size of the region of the brain - known as the orbital prefrontal cortex - that is found just above the eyes. A new study, published today (Wednesday) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that this brain region is bigger in people who have a larger number of friendships. The research was carried out as part of the British Academy Centenary 'Lucy to Language' project, led by Professor Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford in a collaboration with Penny Lewis at The University of Manchester, Joanne Powell and Marta Garcia-Finana at Liverpool University, and Professor Neil Roberts at Edinburgh University. The study suggests that we need to employ a set of cognitive skills to maintain a number of friends (and the keyword is 'friends' as opposed to just the total number of people we know). These skills are described by social scientists as 'mentalising' or 'mind-reading'- a capacity to understand what another person is thinking, which is crucial to our ability to handle our complex social world, including the ability to hold conversations with one another. This study, for the first time, suggests that our competency in these skills is determined by the size of key regions of our brains (in particular, the frontal lobe). Professor Dunbar, from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, explained: "'Mentalising' is where one individual is able to follow a natural hierarchy involving other individuals' mind states.
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