GIRL WITH A DIRTY MIND

If you have ever been in a fight with a man, you may find that he often reacts with silence, or even leaves the room. Research has found that this reaction is caused by lowered activity in the brain region that governs empathy. So, before you blow your top, and raise your blood pressure even further, consider that this is because he is not meant to show feeling.

Another study by Southern California and the University of Texas found that, when shown angry faces, stressed men struggled to show an empathetic side to resonate with another person’s emotions.

The same research was performed on the female brain, and activity in the brain increased the empathetic side to correspond with the angry facial expressions on the photographs. Men and women react to stress differently. Women often turn to their friends for support, and men often withdraw from others to seek solace alone.

Cognitive psychologist, Mara Mather, from the University of Southern California stated, “Very rarely do we see sex differences in the studies that we have in our lab, but now that we’ve started to do things where we’re looking at how stress affects cognitive processes, the stress differences are really jumping out at us. We see differences that don’t show up unless people are stressed.”

Men and Stress

Mather worked with colleagues to focus on the almond sized structure of the brain called the amygdala, which processes fearful projections like emotionally angry faces. The researchers focused also on another deep structure of the brain, the insula, which governs empathy, plus the temporal pole, the part of the mind that governs one’s state of mind. Some men and women were also told to plunge their hand in ice-cold water for several minutes, but others were given warm water to submerge their hand into to gain reactions from both groups.

The brains were then scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), measuring the various blood flows to the different areas of the brain. The members of the study were then asked to complete tasks different to the study, and then had to give another saliva sample to find out their stress hormone levels. The angry and neutral faces were then shown again, and facial gestures recorded.

Researchers discovered that the men/women who were asked to submerge their hand into the ice water became more stressed due to the higher levels of cortisol present in the brain. However, the men and women differed in results. The men with high levels of stress showed a decrease of Fusiform Facial Area (FFA), which governs the part of the brain to add emotion to the face. The men in the warm water group had FFA levels of 1.5% compared to 0.75% of the higher stressed men. However, the same women from the ice-cold water group had FFA levels of 1.5% under those same levels of stress.

The study also found an association with hormones. When testosterone levels were higher in the participants, the levels of FFA were lower during stressful periods. The estrogen levels in women were found to have no comparable fluctuations. This research found that hormones are the source of disparity in how men/women respond to stress.

The study also found brain differences in both men/women, coincidently the brain areas that govern the processing of emotions. Researchers also measured the functional connectivity in both parties to discover which parts of the brain are activated simultaneously. When men were stressed, this area did not fire, compared to women who showed more levels of reaction.

Conclusion

Women are more open to connect with likeminded people during stressful periods. The brain that governs their social and emotional areas reaches out for support. But the same area in the male brain disengages.

Mather concluded, “Other research does find gender differences in the way men and women act when stressed. The current study meshes with those findings.”