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
God made men and women different for a reason. That being said, I absolutely love maps and always have. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was get down my grandmother's giant Atlas and lay on the living room floor devouring the thing. I still to this day will sit and read a map for fun (read them everyday in our homeschool). My daughter, a brilliant child, would get lost in our own neighborhood. I don't think her sense of direction is as strong as mine. I worry about her making it in life later if it doesn't improve. Yikes!
It amazes me to this day how much I'm supposed to know without having been taught whatever it is. I guess that's life. *LOL*
But the interest must be there.
We actually don't mind at all. We just get upset when wifey actually expects us to be the one who gets out and ask the gas station clerk for directions. We catch on to this little game after a few times before refusing to stop at all.
And we're so much better at expressing ourselves using fewer words... In fact, we can hold complete conversations using just a single word, or grunts!
Mark
It's not that men hate asking for directions, at least for me. It's STOPPING to ask for directions that's annoying. If I can get directions on a cell phone from someone, while continuing to drive, I can live with that.
See post #49. Some men really do! Very manly men, I might add!
Excellent point.
I wonder how many men out there are good at knitting doilies?
Lighten up Francis...and yes there is a difference between men and women. Aside from the obvious physical differences, men and women use different portions of their brain and both species have certatin advantages over the other.
Yes, of course it's a generalization. I just find it funny, is all.
My husband is a good talker and listener, too. :)
Well, I guess men are, too...."Tom's Hardware", "Bill's Bar & Grill", "Seaside Bait Shop".
:0)
LOL Or how about those "short cuts" that add 150 miles to a trip?
Hmm..I always print out the map. The driving instructions aren't always the best route. I like to determine my own route.
Yes, you are not typical. Then again, my wife hates shopping too. She also thinks women are worse than men. She doesn't trust them, thinks they are caniving, but does have lots of girlfriends. But her friends that she respects are all married and strong Christians. Sometimes even then, whenever the "girls groups" get into "husband bashing," she's outa there.
It is simply inapropriate behavior, even when the husband "earns it." I feel the same way about "wife bashing." Put soap in my mouth if I ever complain about my wifes shortcomings.
Funny thing about that...am still very good at reading maps but as I age my vocabulary is in decline. I know there's a word I wanna use and it's at the tip of my tongue but it takes too long to think of it.
I either killed too many brain cells during the last decade or that Alzheimers on dad's side of the family is kicking in!
It's just a trend female based on biological (socio-biological) studies and doesn't mean all female have disadvantages in certain abilities. Nothing less and nothing more.
Women speak 20,000 to 25,000 words a day, with gusts up to 100,000 words per day.
Men at 7,000 to 10,000 a day, are all we go... which is why Ladies, as much as we love you, when we come home beat and tired from work we don't want to talk with you about our day.... It's not that we don't love you, or don't have the ability to share... its simply, we've used up all our words already.
LOL! As a WI native, that is DEFINITELY the wrong way! Thanks for the chuckle.
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