Brain Area May Reveal Facebook Addiction: Study

A new study suggests that there is a certain area in our brain that could tell if we are already addicted to Facebook.

Dar Meshi, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, and his colleagues observed the brain activities of 31 participants. They looked at specifically the nucleus accumbens—the area of the brain associated with the reward circuit. There were previous studies associating this region with pleasure felt in food, sex, money, and gains.

The study initially aimed to prove that friends of the Facebook users can affect their reputation by their interactions in the social networking site.

"As human beings, we evolved to care about our reputation. In today's world, one way we're able to manage our reputation is by using social media websites like Facebook," Meshi said in a news release.

Each participant was asked to fill out a Facebook Intensity Scale questionnaire with questions asking the number of minutes they spend in the website, the number of friends, and the number of posts. They also had a video interview to see their reaction when they see how people comment to their posts and how they feel about other participants. Lastly, they played a card game with a money prize. For each activity, the researchers were monitoring their brain activities using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or brain scans.

The researchers observed that for each positive comment received by the user, the nuclear accumbens show stronger movement as well. They then compared this observation to the intensity of Facebook use. The same brain behavior was not seen while playing cards.

"Our study reveals that the processing of social gains in reputation in the left nucleus accumbens predicts the intensity of Facebook use across individuals," Meshi explained. "These findings expand upon our present knowledge of nucleus accumbens function as it relates to complex human behavior."

"Our findings relating individual social media use to the individual response of the brain's reward system may also be relevant for both educational and clinical research in the future," he said.

The study was published in the Aug. 29 issue of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

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