Differences between Men and Women

This has long been one of my favorite topics of conversation. I was listening to public radio and this Neuropsychiatrist by the name of Louann Brizendine was on the show discussing the differences between the male and female brains. I was on my lunch break and caught the show after it had begun but what I did hear really caught my interest, so I thought I'd share. She made a few really interesting comments:

• It's been shown that when a woman is pregnant, she secretes pheromones that fundamentally alter the neurochemistry of her mate (assuming he is around long enough to receive them). Some effects of these pheromones are to decrease his testosterone (making him less prone to violence), increase his prolactin, transmit the symptoms of pregnancy (called couvade or sympathetic pregnancy) and make the auditory centers in his brain react to the sound of a crying infant more efficiently. That means a man can actually hear a baby crying from a longer distance in his wife's last trimester compared to before she got pregnant! This is extremely interesting because it seems like nature prepares a man for fatherhood through the mother. Her neurochemistry is the source of much of his paternal instinct, as well as the sole source of her own! I've always noticed how most little girls pretend to be mommies when they play with their dolls and how this innate parental instinct, which manifests through play, seemed completely absent in boys. Now, I've actually heard the science behind it!

• There is such a thing as a "monogamy gene". One type of prairie dog is monogamous, while another very similar type is not. They found that the only real difference between the two animals is that this one gene is longer in one than in the other. I can't remember if it was the longer gene or the shorter gene that belonged to the monogamous prairie dog but when they were switched, the promiscuous prairie dog suddenly turned monogamous and the monogamous one started to take on multiple mates! They found the same gene in primates, as well as humans! So, while the research is still very new, this suggests that whether or not you can really trust your mate is actually a matter of genetics.

• Men are more given to solving problems than understanding emotion (big suprise, right? lol). Many times a woman will approach her husband with a problem she is having and he will jump right into trying to solve the problem. This offends many women because, in general, we want to know that he understands how we feel (or can at least acknowledge our emotions) before we get advice on how to solve our problem. Brizendine explained how the areas of the male brain responsible for recognizing emotion do not activate for as long as those of a woman do when hearing someone talk about a problem they are having. Instead, this region is almost bypassed in men and, instead, neural activity is diverted to the areas that handle problem solving. So, I guess the take-home for me was that perhaps I should be more understanding of my husband in these situations. It is not that he doesn't care about how I feel. On the contrary, his reaction is a sign of just how much he does care.
  

I know ... I'm a big nerd. However, if anyone is a as interested in this stuff as I am, here is the link to her website:

http://www.louannbrizendine.com/

and directly to the broadcast I refer to:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1565.html