In The Male Brain
, Dr. Louann Brizendine, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the “male reality” is fundamentally different from the female one.
How the minor-neuron system activates
Research has suggested that our brains have two emotional systems that work simultaneously: the minor-neuron system, or MNS, and the temporal-panetal junction system, or TPJ. Males seem to use one system more, and females seem to use the other system more.
Male or female, when we see an emotion on someone else’s face, our MNS activates. The difference is that the female brain stays in the MNS longer while the male brain quickly switches over the TPJ.
Men’s poker faces are one reason women tend to think they are emotionally challenged. But at this study showed it becomes automatic for men to keep their feelings to themselves.
Men and women report that they felt anger for an equal number of minutes per day, men get physically aggressive twenty times more often than women do.
The brain has two independent memory systems. One is memory for unemotional objects or events, and the other is for memory enhanced by emotion.
Autocatalytic or self-reinforcing anger: once men’s anger ignites, it’s hard to stop their anger gets fueled by testosterone, vasopressin and cortisol.
Researchers have also found that high-testosterone men, more than low-testosterone men have a need to dominate others and so they react more dramatically to being challenged.
A stable social hierarchy and a stable marriage are two factors that dial male’s tendency to violence down.
Hormonally, the mature male brain is becoming more like the mature female brain.
Scientists argue that it’s these late-life fertility genes that women share with men that explain women’s longer lives.
The male brain and sexual orientation
One of the early studies by Dick Swaab found that a part of the hypothalamus called the supra chiomastic nucleus (SCN) is twice as large in gay males as in straight males.
The evidence we already have does show that some human brain differences are related not only to gendered behavior but also to sexual orientation.