The MonkeysphereMaia Kantaria

The Monkeysphere

How the size of your brain is affecting your relationships

Maia

explorKantaria, es the reSFC1 lationship between your brain, your environment and your social circles.

I want you to imagine one of your closest friends, an extended family member, your favourite teacher, someone you always smile at in the corridor, and someone you see but have never interacted with. Now picture this: your friend or family member miraculously meets The Queen and receives an invite for afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace. Upon hearing this news, you may be amazed, enthralled – and maybe even a little bit jealous! But what if this same experience happened to that acquaintance, who you don’t really know? Chances are you would not feel the same level of interest that you did when it was someone closer to you. This is because these people exist outside of your Monkeysphere.

Dunbar's Number

The Monkeysphere, more academically known as Dunbar’s number, refers to the number of stable, social relationships a person can maintain at any one time, which is said to be 150. The people whom you see in your day-to-day life but never talk to exist outside of your Monkeysphere. In the 1990s, Robin Dunbar investigated the relationship between the size of the brain (relative to the size of the mammal) and the primate’s social behaviour. He found that the larger the neocortex, the greater the cognitive ability to form and manage relationships with others. The neocortex is a part of the brain located inside the cerebrum that is associated with higher neural functions, such as spatial reasoning, language acquisition, communication and processing sensory information. A higher level of cognitive information puts a strain on the neocortex, and for the brain to be able to remember, process and react to this sufficiently, it must have an increased volume. allowing you to react to stimuli faster and have a higher cognitive awareness; linking to the idea of being able to form and keep track of your 150 relationships. Adding onto this, cerebral atrophy is a condition in which brain tissue is lost (and therefore cells and neurones too), physically causing the brain to decrease in volume. We can infer that a smaller brain results in a smaller neocortex hence less productive relationship building, as per Dunbar’s research. All of us experience cerebral atrophy, however: it is natural. Unfortunately, several external factors can accelerate the speed at which brain tissue is broken down, making the defect crucial. This includes injuries like motor vehicle accidents, falls or extreme force to the head. Someone suffering from cerebral atrophy may lose control of speech, spatial awareness and muscle movements.

Spheres within sphere

The core of Dunbar’s work says that on average every person can maintain 150 social relations, but to expand on this, his theory goes on to state that the tightest inner circle contains five people, followed by a layer of 15 friends, 150 contacts or peers, 500 people you know of, and finally 1500 people you could recognize in a crowd. This makes his rules a lot more flexible and applicable to real life, where platforms such as social media exist, and it is easier for us to expand our social circles. So next time you forget someone’s name, do not blame yourself: they just exist outside your Monkeysphere!

A hard and fast rule?

But surely you cannot generalise something so subjective and insist that every human being has the same number of relationships they can make and maintain efficiently? Not exactly, there are external factors that affect your Monkeysphere, however Dunbar achieved his results through many tests and found the average number of relationships one person could maintain at one time was 150. Of course, this may vary slightly from person to person, and there are many influences on your brain's size and functioning such as diet and injury. A diet consisting of foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and fish is not only linked to a larger brain volume but also increases the presence of myelinated nerve fibres in the neocortex. These fibres promote the speed at which your neurones can send information around different areas in the central nervous system,

Illustration by Amelie Neal