In Nature Neuroscience this February, Bickart et.al. demonstrate a correlation between the number of friends you have and the size of your amygdala . Specifically, they showed that the volume of the amygdala is positively correlated with the size and complexity of a person’s social network.

As stated on the G2C website, the amygdala is involved in processing emotions, and fear–learning. Concerning the amygdala and fear, the flight-or-flight response is one of the most well known examples. So do people with more “frenemies” have larger amygdalae to help them survive inevitable back stabbing?

According to this paper, while there was a correlation between large and complex social networks and amygdala size, they did not find that the quality of social interaction was behind that correlation. In other words, we don’t know if your brain struggles more to process your relationships with your nemesis, or if works harder to maintain a good relationship with your friends.

Of course, we need to be careful about drawing conclusions about what causes what. Although the size of brain regions tends to indicate their processing capacity, more research is needed to show if a person with a larger amygdala has a better chance at developing a large number of friends or if your amygdala changes with your facebook status.

The article can be found at nature.com/neuro

doi:10.1038/nn.272