Recently a few of us here at GROW lead a couples workshop in Atlanta. During the course of the workshop, we talked about the differences between men and women. Since this workshop, I have continued to be fascinated as I seek to understand some of the differences between the sexes.

Most people would say that they experience men and women to be different in a number of ways. But there has always been a rather large unanswered question as to whether this is due to cultural scripts or actual physiological differences. According to research, while men and women seem to share a lot of similarities, these two genders do have some physical differences. Some of the most intriguing and convincing info I have read has come from MRI studies on men and women. Below is an adapted picture from the studies (above: man’s brain; below: woman’s brain).

Credit: Ragini Verma, PhD, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences

In general, what this study found is that men’s brains appear to have more connections within hemispheres while women’s brains appear to have move connections between hemispheres.

What are the implications of this? This means that (generally speaking) men have a more efficient system for coordinated action and are better able to focus on one task at a time (potentially in more depth). Meanwhile a female’s brain appears better at integrating analytical and sequential processes of the left hemisphere with the processing of spatial, intuitive information that goes on the right hemisphere. This would make her better able to multitask and process things more rapidly on an intuitive and emotional/relational level.

To read more on this study, follow this link here.

Mary Overstreet, LAMFT

moverstreet@ GROWcounseling.com