Mind Games

Now neuroscientists can actually see the differences in how men and women process information. These illustrations are of brain scans done while a man and a woman with the same IQ were engaged in the same mental task. In the man’s brain, the areas involved in the task are concentrated in a few centres; in the woman’s multiple sites throughout both the right and left hemispheres are active. These different patterns are typical of the genders and may explain why men excel at focusing on one issue at a time, while the diversity of areas women access in their brains gives them an edge at multitasking. Easy to see, then why a woman needs to avoid all distractions and interruptions when she wants to have a serous talk with the man in her life.