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| Prof. Robin Dunbar (Picture from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/) |
Researchers at Oxford University, England, discovered the link between friendship and the human brain. Apparently someone is making friends in the real world should be harder to exert cognitive ability to understand what other people think.
This was not observed in any friendship in cyberspace, such as through social networking. "People who have many friends who are better able to understand other people's thoughts and have a larger volume in the orbital frontal cortex, the part of the forebrain, just above the eyes," said Professor Robin Dunbar, who led the study.
Dunbar describes the brain's frontal lobe in humans has expanded dramatically over the last half million years compared to other primates.
Friendship is influenced by other factors, such as the amount of free time to socialize, personality, geography, and gender. But several factors, says Dunbar, especially gender, correlated with one's ability to understand other people think.
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| A rotating animation of the human brain showing the left frontal lobe in red within a semitransparent skull. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is sometimes also included in the frontal lobe. Other authors include the ACC as a part of limbic lobe. (Picture from: http://talesfromthelou.wordpress.com/) |
"Our study found no relationship between a person's ability to know what others think (mentalising) and the size of social network," said Professor Dunbar.
In that study, Dunbar and his team tested the 40 respondents. The respondents were asked to make a list of people associated with them last week. The results showed no strong link between people who have a great friendship groups and the size of the brain's prefrontal cortex is also greater.
Joanne Powell of the University of Liverpool, England, said the most important point is that research investigators were able to demonstrate the relationship between brain size and social network size is mediated by the skill to understand the thoughts of others.
"This study tells us the size of the brain determines one's social skills. This is what determines the person has many friends," he said. *** [TELEGRAPH | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 3836]
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