There's a reason he doesn't hear what you're saying. New brain research reveals why—and what to do about it.
It's All in Our Heads
Thanks to improved imaging techniques and testing methods, the biological evidence of gender differences in our brains is emerging rapidly. Now researchers are able to compare what happens within men's and women's heads as they listen, think, remember, and talk. Here are a few of the findings:
- Women have more nerve cells in the left half of the brain, the seat of the ability to process language, than men. And in the brain, quantity of cells often correlates with quality. In a gymnast's brain, for example, the balance and motor skills region is larger than in a nongymnast's, and the more the gymnast practices, the bigger it gets.
- Women have a greater degree of connectivity between the two halves of the brain, and the network of fibers that connect their right and left brains (the corpus callosum) is larger. This may explain an unusual difference, the significance of which scientists don't yet fully understand: The sexes process single words similarly, but when interpreting a sentence, men use a single specific area on one side of the brain; women mobilize the same area, but in the right and left parts of the brain.
- Women appear to use more of their brains to listen and speak. That doesn't make women better listeners or speakers, but the increased accessibility they have to some parts of their brains may make activities essential to communication easier for them.
- Women tend to experience stress more intensely than men thanks to their rich estrogen supply, which activates a larger field of neurons than occurs in men during an upsetting experience.
- Women are better at tasks that require memorization because their higher level of estrogen is associated with improved learning and memory.
- Men can sometimes better identify straightforward emotions such as rage and aggression in others' facial expressions and tone of voice than women can. This may be a holdover from the days when men had to assess aggression in other males so they could speedily arrange a defense. But men don't score as high as women in picking up on subtle nonverbal cues that telegraph sadness or fear.
Published December 2011, Prevention
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