Do men and women think alike? Well, that’s a no-brainer: Of course not. Although 99 percent of our genes are the same, that 1 percent makes all the difference, as neurologist Louann Brizendine explains in her book, The Female Brain (Morgan Road). A few nuggets adapted from the book:
Although male brains are larger by about 9 percent, women have the same number of brain cells packed more densely into a smaller skull.A baby girl’s skills in eye contact and face studying improve more than 400 percent during the first three months of life. Making eye contact is “at the bottom of (the boy baby’s) list of interesting things to do.
Men use about 7000 words a day, women about 20,000.
Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers of a girl’s brain…[providing] a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward can get outside of an orgasm.
Oxytocin [the “love” hormone] is released in the brain after a 20-second hug from a partner—triggering the brain’s trust circuits.
The sexual desire trigger for both genders is the androgen testosterone… men have on average ten to 100 times more testosterone than women.
When she’s under stress, a woman’s desire for sex and physical touch shuts down, perhaps because “the stress hormone cortisol blocks oxytocin’s action in the female brain.
Men have two and a half times the brain space devoted to sexual drive as women do, as well as larger brain centers for action and aggression.
Rejection, it turns out, actually hurts like physical pain because it triggers the same circuits in the brain.
Men notice subtle signs of sadness in a face only 40 percent of the time; women pick up on them 90 percent of the time.
So you see, it’s not rocket science after all. Women work at understanding what makes them tick, while men are often simply dazed and confused. So it would do us all a lot of good to understand, not just our own controls and motivations, but those of our partners. And this book might be a good start.