Facebook is one of the most popular sites browsed across the world during breaks, and researchers in a recent study claim to have found out the reason behind the popularity of the platform during such short breaks. The study conducted by psychologists from the University of California, Los Angeles concluded that even when humans are resting, their brain prepares them to be social.
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About the study
Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology, psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences, said that the brain has a major system that is more inclined toward getting people ready to be social during rest hours. According to research published in the Journal of Cognitive Neurosciences, during a solace, the brain prepares to focus on the minds of other people or “see the world through a social lens,” stated Lieberman.
The research was conducted at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, where researchers showed pictures with captions to 21 subjects and recorded their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. The majority of the pictures reflected people performing actions in social environments and expressing various emotions. All 40 images in one set were given a caption, depicting the person’s mental state. The second set of photos contained identical images but had captions detailing the activities of the person such as, “He is resting his head,” or “She is looking to her side.” In the third set, a number and a simple mathematical equation were attached.
Why Facebook in rest hours?
Thereafter, the participants were asked to tell if the captions in the photographs were accurately written. Lieberman said that a portion of the brain known as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex probably deactivates during dreams and rest in order to reset the social experience and understanding of the social world.
“It is part of a network in the brain that turns on when we dream and during periods of rest, in addition to when we explicitly think about other people,” Lieberman said, adding “When I want to take a break from work, the brain network that comes on is the same network we use when we are looking through our Facebook timeline and seeing what our friends are up to.”
The researcher added that even though Facebook has nothing like the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in mind, the social network was in close sync with the way human brains are wired.
