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Men and Women Have Different Brains: Brain Sex

Men and women perceive the world in significantly different ways, and it is not due to a need to be contrary. There is a rule that governs all things in nature: Form fits function. The brains of men vary in many ways from the brains of women. Language functions, hearing abilities, emotional availability, breadth of attention, spatial abilities, and tasking methods differ a good deal between the genders. These differences can be attributed, at least in part, to the divergent ways in which the brain of each gender is structured and functions. Even sexual stimulation occurs differently in the male brain than in the female brain.

The brain of men is not superior to the brain of women, nor is it inferior. The brains of each gender are simply different. Think of men and women as two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other, yet they are dissimilar, and tend to compliment one another. To a greater or lesser degree, the differences between the ways men and women react to the world play out daily, and tend to affect relationships between the two genders.

A man’s hearing starts off being less acute than a woman’s, and deteriorates more quickly as he ages. Women are known to chastise a man for not listening, when in fact, he may not be able to hear her as clearly as she thinks he can. Men are less able to tune out background noise than women, and may not be able to focus well on a woman’s voice if she is rattling dishes, or talking over the car radio. If you really want a man to hear what you are saying, it is advantageous to talk about 18 inches from his face, and maintain eye contact with him.

A woman’s brain at rest is about five times more active than a man’s brain when he is engaged in solving a problem. That’s right, women are always thinking, and usually in several directions at once. The corpus callosum, a band of nerves connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain, is significantly larger in the female brain than in the male brain. This gives women more freedom to quickly switch between right and left brain functions, and to integrate emotions into thinking.

Men have been known to ask women to “just leave it alone,” as if she is able to put her concerns aside and take a respite from worrying about her troubles. In fact, she cannot. A woman’s brain is never off duty. She goes to bed at night, and awakes the next morning with a “to do” list running through her head. She cannot separate herself from her thoughts as a man can, and just “zone out” for a while.

When a woman asks a man what he is thinking, he may utter a one word reply, “Nothing.” Women never believe this statement. Since women don’t have the ability to make their minds go blank, they naturally assume that men don’t possess the ability either. They are wrong. Men can, and do take a respite from the world by simply not attending to the stream of consciousness that runs through their brain. Women, on the other hand, are always paying attention to their thoughts.

Speaking of attention, men tend to focus their attention, and women spray theirs over a large area of their environment. Sometimes it drives women crazy when a man fails to notice certain things like a messy house, or a new hairdo, and men are made equally insane by a woman’s propensity to see every last detail of every last thing. The differences in the ways in which men and women attend to the world lead them to be perfectly suited for different tasking methods.

Men like to perform tasks in a logical, linear, sequential manner, while women are naturally skilled at multi-tasking. A woman will move between several tasks proficiently and work on them all simultaneously. For women, one task always leads to another. Men like to complete a task and then move on to the next one, hopefully without interruption. Interruption, although equally unwanted by women, does not cause them to have to review the work they already accomplished before resuming the task. This may not be true for a man who feels like he “lost his place” when his work is intruded upon.

The old myth that says that women are not as naturally gifted in the areas of math and science as men may not be such a myth after all. The areas in a man’s brain that are fully dedicated to spatial abilities may be already engaged in enhanced language capabilities in the brains of women. This accounts for both a woman’s ability to speak fluently and use a large vocabulary, and a man’s ability to easily read a map, or figure a math problem in his head. This is not to say that women cannot learn to do mental math, or that a man must go through life with a limited vocabulary, but it does imply that men and women have different gifts when it comes to math, science and language, and that men will have to work harder to master language skills, while women will labor more in mastering math and science concepts.

Throughout the ages men have encouraged women to gain more emotional control, and women have urged men to be more emotionally expressive. Again, the different brains of men and women influence the degree to which emotionality is experienced and expressed. In the woman’s brain, the corpus callosum extends into the frontal lobe of the brain where the emotional centers reside. The corpus callosum of men barely touches the frontal lobe of their brain. It could be that a woman’s emotions are more accessible to her than a man’s emotions are to him.

Women integrate their emotions into their thinking, while men seem to be able to separate the two, and remain cool and objective in even the most emotionally evocative situations. While women may appear to be lacking in emotional control from the male point of view, men’s lack of emotionality may be viewed as cold or uncaring by women. Perhaps women experience emotions more strongly than men, and cannot simply shove their feelings aside when dealing with an emotionally charged situation.

While an emotional release such as crying may relieve a woman’s stress, the same may not be true for men. Women report that they usually feel better after a good cry. They feel calmer, and “cleaned out,” as though the tears have dissolved their internal distress, albeit temporarily. Men do not tend to feel better after crying. In fact, they may feel worse, as though they are drowning in self-pity. Urging men to “let it all out” may not be the favor that a woman thinks it is for a man. Indeed, he may grow angry instead of calm after “a good cry.”

Women tend to talk in circles, while a man takes a more linear route to “get to the point.” This “just the facts, ma’am,” approach to communication is challenging for women, while it seems to come easily to men. Women tend to want to tell everything they know about a given situation, while men prefer to limit their responses to the core issue at hand. The average woman uses about 6000 words daily to express her thoughts, while the average man uses only about 2000 words a day to say what he is thinking. This communication difference is the leading cause of divorce today. When queried about what the problem is with the marriage, a woman says, “He never talks to me,” and a man responds with, “She won’t be quiet long enough for me to say anything!”

When it comes to sexual attraction, men tend to be visually stimulated, while women feel sexual stirrings when a man speaks, or touches her. It is those pesky brain differences at play again! The sound of a man’s voice can make a woman want to draw closer to him. Remember Barry White, the soul singer. Barry may not have been much to look at, but women fell at his feet when he sang or spoke in that sexy bass voice that he was so famous for. A man’s touch can also make a woman tingle clear to her toes, especially a firm, yet gentle touch. A man begins to quiver when a woman starts to remove her clothing, but a woman is generally unmoved at the sight of a man undressing. Looking at pornography is much more provocative for men than for women, which is not to say that women don’t enjoy the sight of a handsome hunk, but viewing a man’s sexual organs will not evoke the same sensual response in a woman that viewing a woman’s breasts and genitalia will stimulate in a man.

Dr. John Gray may have been right when he suggested that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The genders are very different creatures, with different ways of interpreting the same situations, and divergent means of responding to it. So how do men and women ever learn to get along, and be supportive partners for one another?

The trick is to recognize that men and women are different for a reason. The world does not need clones, doing the same things in the same ways, for that would be both boring and redundant. What the world needs is complimentary points of view that enable us to see a bigger picture than either males or females tend to see on their own. The differences in men and woman don’t need to lead to conflict. They can lead to inspiration, creativity, and amazing results if the genders work with instead of against one another.

Show appreciation for the gifts and limitations opposite sex. Keep an open mind when brain sex differences manifest, and understand that the opposite gender’s frame of reference, reaction, and perception is as valid as your own. Appreciate the richness that these differences bring to a relationship instead of trying to “correct” them, and you will soon discover that brain sex differences can really make life fun!