Brain Imaging Shows How Men And Women Cope Differently Under Stress
From John Gray Group
April 1, 2008 - Functional magnetic resonance imaging of men and women under stress showed neuroscientists how their brains differed in response to stressful situations.
In men, increased blood flow to the left orbitofrontal cortex suggested activation of the "fight or flight" response.
In women, stress activated the limbic system, which is associated with emotional responses.
There are many books and movies that highlight the psychological differences between men and women -- Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, for example; but now, neurologists say they have brain images that prove male and female brains do work differently -- at least under stress.
Same species, different genders ... And now, a new high-tech scientific study reveals the differences between men and women may really start at the top. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a high-tech imaging method to scan the brains of 16 men and 16 women. The subjects were placed inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, or fMRI.
"Using this state-of-the art-functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, we try to directly visualize what the human brain does during stress," said Jiongjiong Wang, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of radiology and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Researchers then purposely induced moderate performance stress by asking the men and women to count backward by 13, starting at 1,600. Researchers monitored the subject's heart rate. They also measured the blood flow to the brain and checked for cortisol, a stress hormone.
When the scans were completed, neuroscientists consistently found differences between the men's stressed-out brains and the women's.
Men responded with increased blood flow to the right prefrontal cortex, responsible for "fight or flight." Women had increased blood flow to the limbic system, which is also associated with a more nurturing and friendly response.
Both men and women's brain activation lasted beyond the stress task, but the lasting response in the female brain was stronger. The neural response among the men was associated with higher levels of cortisol, whereas women did not have as much association between brain activation to stress and cortisol changes.
Doctors say this information may someday lead to a screening process for mood disorders. "In the future, when physicians treat patients -- especially depression, PTSD -- they need to take this into account that really, gender matters," Dr. Wang explains.
"Women have twice the rate of depression and anxiety disorders compared to men," notes Dr. Wang. "Knowing that women respond to stress by increasing activity in brain regions involved with emotion, and that these changes last longer than in men, may help us begin to explain the gender differences in the incidence of mood disorders."
