Men and women ‘respond differently to danger’

BBC: Men and women 'respond differently to danger'

Men and women may respond differently to danger, a brain scan study suggests.

A team from Krakow, in Poland, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activity when 40 volunteers were shown various images.

Men showed activity in areas which dealt with what action they should take to avoid or confront danger.

But the study, presented to the Radiological Society of North America, found more activity in the emotional centres of women's brains.

The researchers, from Jagiellonian University Hospital in Krakow, carried out scans on 21 men and 19 women.

Brain activity was monitored while the volunteers were shown images of objects and images from ordinary life designed to evoke different emotional states.

Fight or flight response

The images were displayed in two runs. For the first run, only negative pictures were shown. For the second run, only positive pictures were shown.

While viewing the negative images, women showed stronger and more extensive activity in the left thalamus.

This is an area which relays sensory information to the pain and pleasure centres of the brain.

Men showed more activity in an area of the brain called the left insula, which plays a key role in controlling involuntary functions, including respiration, heart rate and digestion.

In essence, activity in this area primes the body to either run from danger, or confront it head on – the so-called "fight or flight response". …

Interesting. When my dad was a science professor, he used to take his students on an annual camping/canoe trip in the Ozarks. He used to tell ghost stories around the campfire. Once, the group was seated on logs arranged in a semi-circle around the fire. At a critical moment in one of his stories, he leaped across the fire, shrieking at the top of his lungs. He said what astonished him was that every one of the women dropped to the ground or fell off their seats. Every one of the men sprang to his feet and ran four or five steps before regaining composure.

This article seems to correspond well with what I've read elsewhere: women (in the aggregate) tend to process the world more holistically while men tend to process the world more compartmentalized.

(I always read the articles with caution. The comparison between women and men may not match the aggregate, but there seem to be aggregate differences.)