Posted on 01/24/2005 9:01:14 AM PST by Rodney King
MEN frequently despair at women's map-reading skills - or rather their lack of them. Now scientists believe they have pinpointed the reason for this conflict between the sexes.
Researchers say it is all down to differences in the reliance of the sexes on either grey matter or white matter in their brains to solve problems. They found that in intelligence tests men use 6.5 times as much grey matter as women, but women use nine times as much white matter.
Grey matter is brain tissue crucial to processing information and plays a vital role in aiding skills such as mathematics, map-reading and intellectual thought.
White matter connects the brain's processing centres and is central to emotional thinking, use of language and the ability to do more than one thing at once.
Professor Rex Jung, a co-author of the study at the University of New Mexico, said: "This may help explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing, like mathematics and map-reading, while women tend to excel at integrating information from various brain regions, such as is required for language skills.
"These two very different pathways and activity centres, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests."
Previous studies have shown that women have weaker spatial awareness than men, making it harder for them to read maps.
Research has also found that in childhood, girls' vocabulary develops more quickly and that in later life women can speak 20,000 to 25,000 words a day compared to a man's 7000 to 10,000.
For the study, published in the online edition of the journal NeuroImage, researchers performed a series of brain scans on 26 female and 22 male volunteers using magnetic resonance imaging equipment.
All the volunteers were in good health, had no history of brain injury and the average IQ scores of the two sexes were similar.
Their brains were scanned while they carried out tests designed to assess their general intelligence.
Researchers then created a map of a brain showing the varying levels of activity in the brains of men and women. About 40 per cent of the human brain is grey matter and 60 per cent white matter
you know what, I don't get any of it! I don't talk that much and can read a map with the best of them! Plus, I can do better math than my hubby! So what gives? Where they all blonde maybe?
When I read "Millions of people were lost last year due to faulty directional skills. None of those unadaptable people have been located", I'll start to worry about this TRIVIA survey.
I print out both. But sometimes MapQuest is just WRONG, and it can screw you up BAD! LOL!
Oh, my wife does much better than that, lol.
I don't mind shopping, but Sir SuziQ had always hated it, until he discovered Internet shopping. I'm amazed at his skills in just FINDING stuff, then finding the best bargains on them!
We're fixing to put an addition on to our house, that's almost as large as the original house. We're going to do most of the work ourselves, and he said that the three things making that possible are the internet, air tools, and the excel spreadsheet! LOL!
Since we don't know ALL ABOUT the grey matter and the white matter, we don't know what the results mean. Maybe men are thinking about sex when they're taking the test or visa-versa. My theory is that the entire human body has to be tested simultaneously.
You may be on to something. ;)
Or men and women.
I'm so upset I can't breath and I have to leave. "
OK... now that's funny!
I've always wondered why the women in my could not read a map, and I mean almost all of them.
…in later life women can speak 20,000 to 25,000 words a day compared to a man's 7000 to 10,000.
Ain't that the truth!
Women and Foreigners treat ATMs as if they were their own personal computer. If I had a dollar for everytime I was stuck behind Cellphone Mary or Kim Lee Park making what seemed to be financial transactions of Soro-like proportions at the local ATM, I'd be one wealthy man.
Very well said. I agree with both you and your wife.
Mapquest has screwed me one time too many. I use yahoo maps now (recommended by my son).
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about. We went to Yorktown a couple of months ago. We parked the car and walked around the battlefields and then walked through the town itself. When it was time to leave, my husband knew exactly which direction to go to get to the road that we wanted to be on, but he didn't pay attention to the signs. I kept telling him that this was a dead end street. Or that we couldn't drive on some of the streets at all. I pointed out the signs and told him which way to turn, but he would not listen because he knew that we had to go in a certain direction and nothing was going to stop him from going that way.
I think about it this way. Back in the pioneer days, before there were any roads to speak of, Josiah and Abigail would load up the covered wagon and head west. Josiah would do fine because he knew where he wanted to go and he didn't have to deal with pesky things like exits and one way streets. Abigail's skill at pointing out other wagon tracks and frontier churches along the way is more useful now.
Yes! it is. Myth! Myth! Myth!
I can read any maps and have always been able to this magnificient feat!
Furthermore, I have maps are all over my office here at home.
2 Christmas's ago, that's what I asked for, and my husband was up half the night getting them ready to be hung on my walls.
I have the world, then the states, then our state, then our county maps.
I have maps of everywhere we've visited. Just in case we want to go there again. My husband also loves maps. He drives 2500 to 3000 miles a week, for a living.
Also, I know too many men that can't read them for diddley!
Again Myth! Myth! Myth!
I think my ATM transactions take about 30 seconds. Maybe it's cause I'm poor and there is only so much I can do...lol
The difference is in colors. Men have red, blue, green, yellow, purple.
Women have 5,000 names for each color.
Baloney! I have been able to read a map since I was old enough to know what one is. In fact, when we go on a trip to a place we have not been before, I am the navigator. It is odd, but a relative can only read one if it is upside down!
Correction: Why SOME women can't read maps. As an architect I have no trouble reading maps, plans, blueprints, etc.
1. Cars
2. Planes
3. Boats (OK, anything that requires an engine!)
4. Maps
5. South Park
6. Porn (OK, even us guys shouldn't be into it, but the billion dollar industry tells us otherwise).
7. Talk Radio (especially the non-political stuff. Women who are into politics, however, seem to love that Hannity guy).
8. NASCAR (there we go with those engines again!)
9. The Dirty Dozen.
10. Video Games.
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