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| BRAIN.COM Finding Our Way: Men, Women and the
Sense of Direction Tabitha M. Powledge
It has long been known that the average man has an easier time
finding his way around than the average woman does, especially
in unfamiliar terrain. It is also known that the sexes tend to
employ different navigating strategies. Both use landmarks--buildings
or other structures, for example--as guides. But men also navigate
with the help of spatial geometry such as angles and curves.
Neuroscientists at the University of Ulm in Germany have now shown
that these behavioral differences are reflected in differing patterns
of brain activation during navigation. Not only are there differences
in performance between men and women, but they also try to solve
the same problem with different parts of the brain, according
to the study's senior author, Matthias Riepe of Ulm's Department
of Neurology.
The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
technology to study the brains of men and women as they tried
to find their way out of a complex 3-D virtual-reality maze on
a computer. fMRI has become increasingly popular among neuroscientists.
With fMRI, scientists can watch what's going on in the living
brain in real time in order to learn which parts of the brain
are active in many everyday human behaviors.
Full text: http://www.brain.com/about/article.cfm?id=8400&cat_id=12 |
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