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
Professor Rex Jung is in trouble now.
pong
.23¢ placemarker
Well, it does explain why they talk so much.
It is because women speak 20,000 to 25,000 words a day hour, that men only speak 7,000 to 10,000 words a day.
You're so unemotional you could be a rock. Is that any way to treat women? How would you like it if someone inferred the same things about you? Huh? Huh?
Don't we know it!
I think I'm getting gypped out of about 5000 words a day.
This statement always amazes me. I've always been able to read maps. So can my daughter. Isn't this just a male-biased myth?
Well, Mrs. Rodney King sure can't read them, and she is an lawyer from a top law school.
I dated someone who wanted to write checks for everything ,often very small amounts. It was embarrassing to sit in line and have people wait. I offered to pay cash for the purchases but she insisted on paying by check. I stopped shopping with her.
BUMP
Me too, then I married her.
Ping to he who is NEVER lost.....
Women frequently despair at men's reluctance to ask directions when their map-reading skills fail.
Um, is it possible that some women, or men, or whoever, have trouble with map reading because no one ever taught them how?
No one comes out of the womb knowing how to read a UTM grid.
I have to wonder, that's for sure. It was part of my job in the Navy to be able to read maps. I worked with them all the time.
It may be a lack of interest in such things more than anything else. But, hey! I'm just a chick, so what do I know? LOL!
What? Professor Jung is admitting that he actually asks for directions?
Same here, twigs. Love maps, always have even as a child, and am terrific at reading them. Methinks they paint with too broad a brush. My observation is that a lot of females are not too interested in maps, and are less likely to bother with something they don't care for. I loved them, I did bother with them, and I am living proof that this generalized assertion is pure hogwash.
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