Girls Brains are Better

His Brain, Her Brain
Men and women really think differently.
By Rich Maloof for MSN Health & Fitness
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An old joke circulates among neurologists, and it goes something like this: A patient must undergo brain-replacement surgery, and the patient's family asks how much a brain will cost. "Well, it's $5,000 for a male brain and $250 for a female brain," says the surgeon. Just as the men of the family start to snicker, the surgeon clarifies: "We mark down the price of the female brains because they've actually been used."

While surely more popular among female neuroscientists, the joke begs significant questions about gender and the brain. Do women and men share the same mental potential, and are our brains identically equipped?

We've been poking around under the cranial hood for centuries now, and the brain remains by far the least understood organ in the body. However, research has revealed a few intriguing distinctions between the sexes.

For years it was assumed that gender differences in brain functionality were controlled by sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen. Now we understand that every one of the brain's four lobes differs between men and women in size, neurochemical makeup and function.

Superhighways and country roads

The female predisposition for empathy and social grace, for example, has been linked to a part of the brain called the isthmus. The isthmus is a narrow stretch of the corpus callosum, a band of tissue that connects the left and right sides of the brain, and in women it is pronouncedly thicker. Greater connectivity between the brain's two hemispheres may explain why women are typically better at linking emotion with language.

In general, the left hemisphere is in charge of functions of precision and logic; science, reading and writing, analysis, and fact management are all characteristic. The right hemisphere is in charge of nonlinear, imaginative thinking, as used in creativity, perception and humor. Even in scientific circles these right-side aspects were long undervalued—for years, the right brain was known as the "minor" hemisphere.

You can see, then, why a strong link between sides is assumed to come with certain benefits. For instance, the left side can more easily assign the appropriate expression to a feeling that the right side has processed.

This doesn't mean men have any less right- or left-brain capacity—just less connectivity between the two. When the isthmus is thicker (say that 10 times fast), the brain stands to operate more holistically. "Women have a superhighway going on there," the poet Robert Bly once told The New York Times, while men "have a country road."

His Brain, Her Brain
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What's the matter?

Also, while men tend to have physically bigger brains—because brain size is related to body size—women's brains have a cortex that is 15 to 20 percent more developed. Commonly referred to as gray matter, the cortex is that top layer full of folds that's responsible for primary functions like speech, movement and perception. It's actually not gray but a girly pink color—coincidence?

Despite these evolutionary advantages, and the claims of wives and girlfriends everywhere, the male brain is not an entirely lost cause. Men counter all of that gray matter with proportionally more white matter. This is where the brain's interconnections are made. An elaborate system of nerve fibers provides conduits among everything the brain learns; the more connections made in your white matter, the smarter you get.

The components of knowledge—memories, sensations, skills—are all stored in different parts of the brain, and they're only put to good use when they're put in touch with one another. Each is like a light bulb that can't shine any light until it becomes part of the circuit. It's due to an abundance of white-matter connectivity that men are sometimes advantaged with organization, attention to detail, spatial relations and problem solving. At a young age, males' ability to think systematically is evident at play with toys like Legos, which call on strengths like visualization and understanding of a geometric system. Grown men often show similar acuity with navigation and engineering.

Life outside the brain

The differences between male and female brains shouldn't be overemphasized. As most researchers will tell you, there are far greater neurological differences between individuals than there are between men and women at large. The number of nerve fibers in the corpus callosum, for example, can vary from one person to the next by threefold. Back in the 1960s, surgeons even cut the corpus callosum clean through as a last-ditch effort to treat uncontrolled epilepsy. They found that these patients could carry on most functions quite well.

Still, we're inclined toward generalizations. Women are sympathizers and men are systemizers. Left-brained people are calculating and right-brainers are dreamers. We like sweeping ideas like these because they promise to explain clashes, when true peace of mind—and peace among the sexes—is in managing a balance between two perfectly matched halves of a whole.

From: MSN

I knew it all along. :D

And of course, the daily Ninjai Chapter