Posted on 09/03/2006 2:45:45 PM PDT by mjp
AOL Book Maven Bethanne Patrick Interviews Louann Brizendine, M.D., author of 'The Female Brain.'
Dr. Louann Brizendine may be a neuropsychiatrist, but she hasn't forgotten how to speak to the General Public: "Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," she writes. Men, however, "have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."
Brizendine, the 53-year-old Yale-trained head of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic at UCSF, pulls no punches when it comes to explaining that male and female brains are so different that we might as well accept our inner Fred and Wilma Flintstones. 'The Female Brain,' her new book, is Brizendine's highly personal yet very professional (70 pages of notes!) take on the influence of biology on behavior.
To continue down that eight-lane superhighway for a moment: Brizendine explains that connecting through talking (whether verbally, or via new technology) activates the pleasure centers in the female brain. "We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm."
And Brizendine offers another tip about female hormones: just like verbal connection, physical connection offers a high, too. A 20-second hug can result in a rush of oxytocin to the brain -- and that makes women believe that the person they're touching is trustworthy. So if you're going to hug a guy on a first date, keep it brief! In her interview with AOL Book Maven Bethanne Patrick, Dr. Brizendine explains why men think about sex so much, why women change their minds so much and how this affects our relationships.
Now, on to the interview:
Hi. This is AOL's Book Maven Bethanne Patrick and today I am speaking with Louann Brizendine, M.D. She is the author of the new book 'The Female Brain' -- that is going to give men “brain envy.” The first thing we want to know is: Why do men think about sex all the time?
Understanding Female Behavior
Louann Brizendine: When we are all conceived, in the very beginning of our brain up till 8 weeks old of our fetal lives, we both have the same female type brain. But in the male brain, the tiny testicles in the male's body start pumping out adult levels of male testosterone of about 8 weeks of fetal life. It marinates the brain, changing it from female-type circuits to male circuits, meaning that, for example, the cell areas for sexual pursuit are doubled in size in the male brain.
Bethanne Patrick: So there is a real reason that men think about sex once every minute but women only think about it once every couple of days?
Louann Brizendine: It depends on the female's cycle. The female needs to have her highest sexual interest a few days before ovulation -- because that is the best time to get pregnant.
Bethanne Patrick: So, women do start to think about sex more at certain time of the month?
Louann Brizendine:When the women's testosterone level is highest, is between two and four days before she ovulate. So at that second week of our cycle, we women get a little hornier than usual. I guess the guys kind of have to read the tea leaves to figure out what days those are.
Bethanne Patrick: Is reading those tea leaves is something that men will always be confused by? Because one of the questions that your book may not answer, but your book does bring up, is that time-honored Freudian, 'What do women want?' What did you find in your research about what women actually want?
Louann Brizendine: That is a good question because what women want is different on different days of the month. The guys that can read the tea leaves best [have the most success]… and we all know that for women foreplay is everything that happens 24 hours before insertion; but for men, it is everything that happens three minutes before.
Bethanne Patrick: It sounds as if the genitalia, the gonads, the hormones are what is driving this … it changes the brain, instead of the other way around.
Louann Brizendine: Our joke is the ovaries control the brain or the testes control the brain. Of course that is not true; they are in a nice dialogue with each other, but the hormones do run the circuitry in the brain that we call sex specific circuitry. Estrogen, testosterone, progesterone run the female circuitry and male testosterone runs the male typical brain circuitry. We just turn on the spigots for the testosterone and it runs those circuits. At age 30 males, male's testosterone starts to decrease 3 percent per year. By the time they are 80 years old, they have sort of run out.
Bethanne Patrick: How does that affect our relations with them? If the testosterone running out, thing must change in their brains?
Louann Brizendine: Yes. Things become calmer between genders at that stage. Lots of women say that by the time their age matched mate is 65 things have become calmer in that dimension. They don't have as many of those gender typical fights.
Bethanne Patrick: One of the things that I find fascinating is that you say that women each day that women use about 20,000 words (on average) where as men use just 7,000 words.
Louann Brizendine: Yes. In 'The Female Brain,' I describe some studies that basically show that communication gesture words and partial words -- so that is the whole body of research -- females can be as high as the 20, 000 a day level and men are more in the 7, 000 through 10, 000 in terms of just the communication events.
Bethanne Patrick: So why do women tend to remember fights that men say never actually happened?
Louann Brizendine: One of the things about the female brain in terms of remembering emotional events or details. For example, let's say you had a really bad fight with your husband and you were in a certain room on a certain day and you remember what he was wearing and what was going on in the house. He doesn't even remember what happened, except that you are reminding him all the time. It’s not that he doesn't love you; his brain may not be set up to tag these types of details from the emotional events.
Bethanne Patrick: Does that mean that women are more adaptable than men? That women's brains are more adaptable?
Louann Brizendine: The issue that women's brain being more adaptable as I write in 'The Female Brain,' I think that we adapt to emotional citations and relationship citations very quickly and adeptly. That actually shows in the research of older males and females where older women have many more circle of friends typically than males do so when a female loses her spouse she is able to adapt more quickly than he is.
Bethanne Patrick: I know that with the research that you are doing with the female brain, there are going to be more and more people paying attention to the differences. Dr. Louann Brizendine, 'The Female Brain' from Morgan Road Books is out. Thanks you for being with AOL Books today.
Louann Brizendine: Thanks for having me, Bethanne.
Bethanne Patrick: You are welcome. Bye-bye now. This is AOL's Books Maven Bethanne Patrick.
uh,what did you say?
Oxymoron alert!
bump
That explains why we have so many horrid, massive accidents.
Men and women are different!
I feel so validated.
The Gossip Control Center is too small.
I will say that I have seen some very high performance aircraft over in the private side of airports (general aviation).
Yea, 'cause on the intersection of that massive super highway and that country road there isn't even a traffic light.
Good catch. Also, the chocolate cortex is mysteriously missing.
"testosterone marinates the brain" ... now who'd athunk?
After you read this short book try these.....
The Code of Ethics for Lawyers The Australian Book of Foreplay
The Book of Motivated Postal Workers
Americans' Guide to Etiquette
The World Guide to Good American Beer
Royal Family's Guide to Good Marriages
Safe Places to Travel in the Mexico
Bill Clinton: A Portrait of Integrity
Jerry Garcia's Guide to Beating Drug Addiction
Cooking Gourmet Dishes With Tofu
Al Gore: The Wild Years
America's Most Popular Lawyers
Career Opportunities for History Majors
Detroit - A Travel Guide Dr. Kevorkian's Collection of Motivational Speeches
Everything Men Know about Women
George Foreman's Big Book of Baby Names
Mike Tyson's Guide to Dating Etiquette
The Amish Phone Book
Great Women Drivers Of Today
Beauty Secrets by Janet Reno Home Built Airplanes by John Denver
How To Get To The Super Bowl by Dan Marino
Things I Love About Bill by Hillary Clinton Things I Can't Afford by Bill Gates
Things I Would Not Do For Money by Dennis Rodman
All The Men I've Loved Before by Ellen DeGeneres
Spotted Owl Recipes by the Sierra Club
8 lane superhighway, huh?
Sort of like getting through Atlanta at 5PM.
Yup, and they can't even be trained to leave toilet seats up.
Soft centers/truffles if I had my 'druthers.
A trained nose can pick it up.
Cheers!
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