Social butterflies often have bigger ffxiv gil personalities than introverts. Now, new research suggests that parts of their brains might be bigger too.
Scientists in New England have linked the size of the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain tied to fear and fight-or-flight responses, to the size and complexity of one's social network.
The bigger the amygdala, the larger and more intricate the person's social life seems to be, according to the team at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The findings, published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience, seem to fall in line with previous research showing that primates tend to be more social if they have larger amygdala, though none of the studies have determined whether a bigger-sized amygdala is the reason for the more extensive social network or the other way around.
"We know that primates who live in larger social groups have a larger amygdala, even when controlling for overall brain size and body size," study lead author Lisa Feldman Barrett, of MGH's Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a psychology professor at Northwestern University, said in a statement. "We considered a single primate species, humans, and found that the amygdala volume positively correlated with the size and complexity of social networks in adult humans."
The researchers said they studied the rest of the subcortical structures within runescape gold the brain but saw no convincing evidence that a comparable association existed between the size of those areas and the complexity of one's social network.
They also found that the volume of the amygdala, located in the temporal lobe, didn't factor in to other facets of people's social lives, like support from others or satisfaction with personal relationships.
"This link between amygdala size and social network size and complexity was observed for both older and younger individuals and for both men and women," study co-author Dr. Bradford C. Dickerson, who is on staff at the hospital's department of neurology and is a neurology professor at Harvard University, said in a statement. "This link was specific to the amygdala, because social network size and complexity were not associated with the size of other brain structures."
The scientists asked 58 participants aged 19 to 83 to report on the size and intricacy of their social networks in standard questionnaires measuring the number of regular social connections each subject had as well as the number of different groups the contacts belonged to.
The participants then had to undergo MRIs runescape money so the research team could collect data about the various structures in their brain. Among the information they gathered in the brain scans was the volume of each person's amygdala.
Feldman Barrett and her colleagues found that those with larger amygdalas had more extensive social lives, results that are consistent with a theory known as the "social brain hypothesis" -- the notion that human brains, specifically amygdalas, have grown and evolved to manage more complicated, modern-day social situations.
AOL's mental health expert Dr. Daniel Carlat said that while the findings are interesting, too many questions are left unanswered to be able to form solid conclusions.
"This type of study is not all that satisfying scientifically because we don't really understand any mechanism for how larger amygdalas would lead people to have larger social groups," Carlat, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts, told AOL Health. "It could be a conincidence or it could be something more meaningful, but at this point we don't know."
The role the amygdala plays in people's behavior is already murky, so decoding what runescape accounts the apparent link between it and social networks really means is challenging, according to Carlat.
"With a result like this, we can spin all kinds of theories as to why a larger amygdala would lead to larger social networks -- or vice versa," he said. "But since we don't have any clear understanding of what the amygdala does, any of these theories remain speculation."
He said that since that portion of the brain is thought to control fight-or-flight responses, it may make sense that it would be bigger in those with more people around them.
"We believe the amygdala has to do with how we relate to fear. If you have a large network of people around you, there are a lot more opportunities to process the fear response," Carlat said. "If you think of the amygdala as the fear muscle, there are a lot more chances to flex that muscle."
Feldman Barrett said more work has to be done to identify why the trend appeared in her findings.
"Further research is in progress to try to understand more about how the amygdala and other brain regions are involved in social behavior in humans," she said. "We and other researchers are also trying to understand how abnormalities in these brain regions may impair social behavior in neurologic buy ffxiv gil and psychiatric disorders."
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