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Friendship, autism and brain size

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Kon
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27 Mar 2012, 10:13 am

This is confusing me. A recent study suggests that the prefrontal cortex is bigger in people who have a larger number of friendships:

Quote:
'Perhaps the most important finding of our study is that we have been able to show that the relationship between brain size and social network size is mediated by mentalising skills. What this tells us is that the size of your brain determines your social skills, and it is these that allow you have many friends.'...Professor Dunbar said: 'All the volunteers in this sample were postgraduate students of broadly similar ages with potentially similar opportunities for social activities. Of course, the amount of spare time for socialising, geography, personality and gender all influence friendship size, but we also know that at least some of these factors, notably gender, also correlate with mentalising skills. Our study finds there is a link between the ability to read how other people think and social network size.


Brain Size May Determine Whether You Are Good at Keeping Friends
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 145542.htm

One would thus expect that individuals with AS to have smaller relative areas of prefrontal cortex and yet, other research suggests that autistics have largesr frontal cortex:

Localized Enlargement of the Frontal Cortex in Early Autism
http://dept.wofford.edu/neuroscience/ne ... dev126.pdf

Autism Linked With Excess of Neurons in Prefrontal Cortex
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 200522.htm



TechnoDog
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27 Mar 2012, 10:37 am

I can't be bothered with this research any more:-

Extroverts large circle of friends.
Introverts few friends with more meaningful relationships.

( I could also list a hole bunch of reasons why, large to small circle of friends, in the 2 different groups. )

Can't have more than 170 or so friends on a networking site or they just become followers.

I not read them yet, so I will be reading right now. I think size of brain is just laughable, at the first part of your quote, so I will read them.


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Invader
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27 Mar 2012, 10:54 am

TechnoDog wrote:
Extroverts large circle of friends.
Introverts few friends with more meaningful relationships.


Those terms are only descriptions of people, not explanations of why they are the way that they are.

It is not correct to say that a person is outgoing "because they are extraverted", they are described as extraverted because they are outgoing. The word is a short synonym for a longer list of traits and behaviours, it is not a condition which causes those traits and behaviours.

The word that has been used to describe all things which share a certain set of characteristics, is not the source of those characteristics. A pear doesn't taste like a pear just because it's called a pear, it tastes like a pear because it is the fruit that grew from a pear tree.



TechnoDog
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27 Mar 2012, 11:43 am

Invader wrote:
TechnoDog wrote:
Extroverts large circle of friends.
Introverts few friends with more meaningful relationships.


Those terms are only descriptions of people, not explanations of why they are the way that they are.


What happens if I told you that the "frontel Lobes controls personality".

http://www.neuroskills.com/brain-injury ... -lobes.php


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TechnoDog
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27 Mar 2012, 11:58 am

Invader wrote:
It is not correct to say that a person is outgoing "because they are extraverted", they are described as extraverted because they are outgoing. The word is a short synonym for a longer list of traits and behaviours, it is not a condition which causes those traits and behaviours.


Your also missunderstanding what Introversion & extroversion actually mean. By saying the outgoing part.


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