WSJ named the maximum number of friends for one person

British psychologist Robin Dunbar suggested that due to the peculiarities of the brain, a person can have no more than 150 friends. This was reported on October 7 by The Wall Street Journal.

"According to British psychologist Robin Dunbar, the high cognitive requirements for maintaining useful social connections impose a limit on the number of stable relationships that we can maintain," the article says.

To better understand these limitations, Dunbar studied monkeys, lemurs, and great apes and found a link between the size of the neocortex—the outermost, most developed part of the mammalian brain responsible for higher cognitive functions such as thinking, speech, memory, etc.—of each primate and the size of its stable social groups. The data revealed a clear relationship between two variables: the larger the neocortex, the larger the social group.

Dunbar, for example, found that the average size of a chimpanzee social group is about 50 individuals.

"Based on the ratio of the size of the neocortex of more than 30 primate species and the size of their social groups, he deduced the likely size of social groups in humans. The answer is 150," the newspaper writes.

Dunbar believes that this figure has remained unchanged since the advent of humans and has not changed even in the digital age of social media.

Scary Dream: Why the brain starts killing itself

Experts described how a lack of night rest affects the functioning of the brain and cardiovascular system.

On the same day, it was reported that creative hobbies — from Argentine tango to guitar playing — can slow down brain aging at the molecular level. An international group of scientists came to this conclusion after analyzing data from musicians, dancers, artists, and even gamers from 10 countries. The scientists used the so—called "brain clock" - models that compare the biological and actual age of the human brain.

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