Question: Are there differences between male and female brains?
Dr. Amen's Answer: Actually, it’s hard to find areas of the brain that gender does not affect. Men, for instance, have more neurons than women, but women have a larger number of cellular connections and a larger corpus collosum, which connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This gives women access to language on both sides of the brain, which might explain why they often have so much to say. In language, men tend to be totally left-sided, more detail-oriented, and quicker to get to the point. The extra connections in women’s brains also make them better at multitasking. They can talk on the phone while watching TV, cooking dinner, and checking their e-mail. Men do best when they do only one thing at a time.
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is larger in women. This is the most human, thoughtful part of the brain. With low PFC activity, people are more likely to display excitement-seeking behavior. That’s why men are more likely to do stupid things like jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used brain scans to show that, when a man is at rest, at least 70 percent of his brain is “dead” or inactive. That explains why he can watch the same sports replay 600 times. According to the same study, when women are at rest, at least 90 percent of their brains are busy, confirming that women are always thinking, thinking, thinking. When men are thinking, it’s often about sex. That’s because the part of the brain responsive to sex hormones is two and a half times larger in men than women.
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