• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Men and women respond differently to danger

NewEra

New member
Joined
Dec 21, 2008
Messages
3,104
MBTI Type
I
Link: BBC News - Men and women 'respond differently to danger'

Men and women 'respond differently to danger'

Men and women may respond differently to danger, a brain scan study suggests.

A team from Krakow, in Poland, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activity when 40 volunteers were shown various images.

Men showed activity in areas which dealt with what action they should take to avoid or confront danger.

But the study, presented to the Radiological Society of North America, found more activity in the emotional centres of women's brains.

The researchers, from Jagiellonian University Hospital in Krakow, carried out scans on 21 men and 19 women.

Brain activity was monitored while the volunteers were shown images of objects and images from ordinary life designed to evoke different emotional states.

Fight or flight response

The images were displayed in two runs. For the first run, only negative pictures were shown. For the second run, only positive pictures were shown.

While viewing the negative images, women showed stronger and more extensive activity in the left thalamus.

This is an area which relays sensory information to the pain and pleasure centres of the brain.

Men showed more activity in an area of the brain called the left insula, which plays a key role in controlling involuntary functions, including respiration, heart rate and digestion.

In essence, activity in this area primes the body to either run from danger, or confront it head on - the so-called "fight or flight response".

Researcher Dr Andrzej Urbanik said: "This might signal that when confronted with dangerous situations, men are more likely than women to take action."

Positive images

While viewing positive images, women showed stronger activity in an area of the brain associated with memory.

With men, the stronger activity was recorded in an area associated with visual processing.

Dr Urbanik believes these differences suggest women may analyse positive stimuli in a broader social context and associate positive images with a particular memory.

For instance, viewing a picture of a smiling toddler might evoke memories of a woman's own child at this age.

Conversely, male responses tend to be less emotional.

Interesting story. Not that surprising really.
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
50,192
MBTI Type
BELF
Enneagram
594
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I'm always curious as to "how much greater" for each response. Is it significant in a practical way?
 

Magic Poriferan

^He pronks, too!
Joined
Nov 4, 2007
Messages
14,081
MBTI Type
Yin
Enneagram
One
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
While viewing positive images, women showed stronger activity in an area of the brain associated with memory.

With men, the stronger activity was recorded in an area associated with visual processing.

Dr Urbanik believes these differences suggest women may analyse positive stimuli in a broader social context and associate positive images with a particular memory.

For instance, viewing a picture of a smiling toddler might evoke memories of a woman's own child at this age.

That's the sort of extrapolation I worry about. That's a nice hypothesis, but I hope people who read these things realize how far outside the given evidence this speculation goes.
 

Spamtar

Ghost Monkey Soul
Joined
Sep 1, 2009
Messages
4,468
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
So this is why taking a date to a pay per view MMA showing is a bad idea?
 

Orangey

Blah
Joined
Jun 26, 2008
Messages
6,354
MBTI Type
ESTP
Enneagram
6w5
So this is why taking a date to a pay per view MMA showing is a bad idea?

I'm thinking there are probably eight hundred reasons as to why taking your date to a ppv MMA showing is a bad idea. And most are probably more immediate and pressing than because some fMRI scans showed that a handful of men and women had slightly different reactions to "negative" and "positive" images.
 
Top