Scientists and writers love to compare brains to whatever the
cool new technology is. Your brain is a steam engine! Your brain
is a telephone! A calculator! A computer! And now, in 2011? Your
brain is like Facebook, of course. That's the comparison
Carnegie Mellon neurology researcher Alison Barth hints at in a
new paper about the behavior of neurons, anyway. Barth and her
team say they've identified a small group of neurons responsible
for a majority of brain work, including "conscious thought,
language and spatial reasoning" (basically, all the good stuff).
And what are those small, highly-active neurons like? "It's like
Facebook. Most of your friends don't post much—if at all," Barth
said. "But, there is a small percentage of your friends on
Facebook who update their status and page often. Those people
are more likely to be connected to more friends, so while
they're sharing more information, they're also receiving more
information from their expanded network, which also includes
other more active particip