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社交活动影响大脑结构 Being a social butterfly just might change your brain: In people with a large network of friends and excellent social skills, certain brain regions are bigger and better connected than in people with fewer friends, a new study finds. 一项最新研究发现，成为一名“交际花”可能意味着改变你的大脑：比起朋友少的人，拥有庞大网友圈和杰出社交能力的人的特定大脑区域更大、联络更发达。 ? The research, presented here Tuesday (Nov. 12) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, suggests a connection between social interactions and brain structure. ? Were interested in how your brain is able to allow you to navigate in complex social environments, study researcher MaryAnn Noonan, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, in England, said at a news conference. Basically, how many friends can your brain handle? Noonan said. ? Scientists still dont understand how the brain manages human behavior in increasingly complex social situations, or what parts of the brain are linked to deviant（不正常的） social behavior associated with conditions like autismand schizophrenia. ? Studies in macaque monkeys have shown that brain areas involved in face processing and in predicting the intentions of others are larger in animalsliving in large social groups than in ones living in smaller groups. ? To investigate these brain differences in humans, Noonan and her colleagues at McGill University, in Canada, recruited 18 participants for a structural brain-imaging study. They asked people how many social interactions they had experienced in the past month, in order to determine the size of their social networks. ? As was the case in monkeys, some brain areas were enlarged and better connectedin people with larger social networks. In humans, these areas were the temporal parietal junction, the anterior cingulate cortex and the rostral prefrontal cortex, which are part of a network involved in mentalization -- the ability to attribute mental states, thoughts and beliefs to another. ? These different brain regions are all singing different songs, Noonan said