Posted on 04/11/2007 5:02:05 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...It is a misconception that the differences between men’s and women’s brains are small or erratic or found only in a few extreme cases, Dr. Larry Cahill of the University of California, Irvine, wrote last year in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Widespread regions of the cortex, the brain’s outer layer that performs much of its higher-level processing, are thicker in women. The hippocampus, where initial memories are formed, occupies a larger fraction of the female brain.
Techniques for imaging the brain have begun to show that men and women use their brains in different ways even when doing the same thing...
It is no surprise that the male and female versions of the human brain operate in distinct patterns...The male brain is sexually oriented toward women as an object of desire. The most direct evidence comes from a handful of cases, some of them circumcision accidents, in which boy babies have lost their penises and been reared as female. Despite every social inducement to the opposite, they grow up desiring women as partners, not men...
...Presumably the masculinization of the brain shapes some neural circuit that makes women desirable. If so, this circuitry is wired differently in gay men. In experiments in which subjects are shown photographs of desirable men or women, straight men are aroused by women, gay men by men.
Such experiments do not show the same clear divide with women. Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, “Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate — they get aroused by both male and female images,” Dr. Bailey said. “I’m not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Incidentally, Freud felt women were "polymorphous perverse" in that they had sex with whomever they bonded with regardless of whether male or female. For this he earned hostility from all traditional thinkers.
IT was to Newsweak about 10 yesrs ago, IIRC.
It’s been known for thousands of years that women have thicker hippocampuses than men............That’s so they can have babies, silly!.........
The hippocampus, where initial memories are formed, occupies a larger fraction of the female brain.
I can vouch for that. My wife doesn’t forget anything, especially if it’s a screw up on my part!
HAve yo ever noticed that when guys get angry it’s usually over and done with in 2 hours, but women stay angry for weeks......years, even........
I dispute this. Here's how I think it works with straight women: if we see a picture of a handsome man we're aroused because we can envision him having great sex with us. If we see a picture of a beautiful woman we are aroused because we identify with her. We do not desire to have sex with the beautiful female figure; we want to be her or feel like her and to exprience what she is experiencing sexually. That is the premise of romance novels: the reader puts herself in the place of the heroine and is aroused by the heroine's adventures.
“HAve yo ever noticed that when guys get angry it’s usually over and done with in 2 hours, but women stay angry for weeks......years, even......”
Yes, I have been a subject of that memory . . .
That’s an interesting observation and makes sense to me. From what I’ve read in the past, men and women (in general, not in every case) are also different in that men are primarily visually stimulated whereas the female is primarily emotionally stimulated. What’s your opinion?
Behavioral scientists have discovered that Lingering Female Resentment Syndrome may be greatly mitigated by the delivery of flowers, chocolate, or gift cards to a shoe store.
Emotionally stimulated by financial status.....
I don't know: what do you think?
ye$, Ye$, YE$ !!! LOL!
Freud was absolutely right...but the predominant culture hasn’t evolved far enough yet to accept that.
uh...uh...uh...uh...wha...what was the question?
Have I??? AND HOW!!!!
I work in a large office and I see this all the time. I even read something in the paper years ago that said one of the major differences in the workplace between men and women is that women tend to hold grudges forever, while men tend to blow up and forget about it a week later.
I have seen this in action so many times. A few years ago someone was retiring and I asked one of my co-workers if she was going to the retirement party.
She replied with a very nasty "NO!!". When I asked her why, she said "I'm not going because Barb called me a bitch."
I said, "I never heard about that - when did it happen?"
Her answer: "Twelve years ago."
I was amazed - I said, "How can you still be mad about something that was said 12 years ago? I can't even remember what someone told me 12 days ago!"
She was just as angry about it then as the day it happened so many years ago.
I see examples of this over and over again.
While a man may get mad at someone if they screwed him over - usually he's over it after a few weeks at the most - a year or two later, he is probably not even going to remember it. But women? Oh boy - they NEVER let go of that anger.
Obviously there are exceptions - I have known men to hold grudges and I have known a FEW women who don't. But as a rule.........
Women's porn--romance novels--consists of words, and most of them are far from what a man would consider graphic. They speak of love before libido. Very few of us will go to the trouble of buying pictures of naked men, but we'll spend fortunes of videos that show a hero wearing riding boots and breeches. Women are also turned on by touch over a larger percentage of body area than men are (it's hard to turn a man on by touching his back or leg, for instance, but women will respond). With more olfactory sensitivity than men, women are more aroused by scent than men are (we adore the scent of a beloved man and can recognize our husbands, like our children, by scent. And you didn't really think we were dabbing ourselves with that expensive perfume for your pleasure, did you?)
Thanks for the insight. (taking notes for research.....yeah, that’s the ticket, research!)
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