Women's better emotional recall explained (Newsflash:Men and Women are different

NewScientist.com ^ | 07/22/02 | Alison Motluk

[What Is Ain't]

Men and women's brains use different strategies to remember highly emotional images, according to a new brain imaging study. The discovery helps explain how women manage to remember emotional events better than men, something psychologists have known for years.

"It's hard evidence that there are differences in the brains of men and women," says Stephen Maren, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, commenting on the research.

He thinks that evolution may explain the differences. Women tend to be caregivers, more empathetic and more verbal: "Those traits are reflected in brain mechanisms."

In the study, Turhan Canli, at the State University of New York at Stony brook, and his colleagues asked 12 women and 12 men to view a selection of images while their brains were being scanned by functional MRI.

Some were neutral pictures of things such as fire hydrants and bookshelves. But others were disturbing - of mutilated bodies and autopsies. Volunteers had to rate each image on a four-point scale for emotional intensity.

Without warning

Three weeks later, without warning, the volunteers were shown all the images again, plus 48 previously unseen images. They were asked to say whether they remembered the images clearly, only vaguely, or not at all.

One hypothesis for why women remember emotional events better than men is that they experience it more deeply - that is, they have the same brain activation but it is stronger. Another theory is that men and women experience and encode emotional memories in completely different ways.

The researchers found that even when both sexes rated an image as "highly emotionally intense", women were better at remembering it three weeks later. They also discovered that men and women really do recruit different parts of their brains during emotional experiences. Women had more activation in their left brains, and men in their right.

More importantly, for women the experiencing and the encoding used many of the same brain regions; in men it did not. "For whatever reason, it seems that integration of emotional experiences and encoding to memory is much tighter in women than in men," says Canli. "But it's unclear what could produce this phenomenon."

Maren also wonders if men and women just find different things arousing. This study used "disgust" to arouse emotions -- but what if they had used rage or aggression or pornography? "Are men worse across the board, or just in this type of arousing images?" he asks.

[parsifal]

Let ol' parsy provide another explanation: "Shared processing"---yep, females use shared processing toenhance their memory. Let something happen and a female immediately tells her momma, her friends, the bank teller, every female person with 10parsecs.Then the female accesses her random memory and replays the incident about a zillion times. Particularly if the male commits some little faux pas like forgetting her birthday or anniversary. If the prime female processing forgets the data, the mother-in-law processing unit will restore the lost data. parsy, who is fixing to run for cover.

[ElkGroveDan]

I can never figure why the gals are so good with birthdays. I come from a big family and have a hard enough time remembering my siblings' special days. Within a couple months of being married my wife had down all the birthdays, plus the inlaws' and nieces and nephews and even wedding anniversaries.

I have since learned from family and friends that they have experienced the same phenomenon with their spouses.

[demlosers]

NEWSFLASH:

Women are emotional and men are not.

Duh....

[demnomo]

LOL! That's too funny...and very true for most women!

[concerned about politics]

Good. Get those pictures of aborted babies out there for these "ladies" to see.
Left wing politicians already know this. That's why liberal TV and bad images keep the womans vote pretty much tied up. BUT, some women are smarter than most, and vote right wing. They can see past the garbage and use their logic.

[MonroeDNA]

Next they'll find that women remember something you said 7 months ago, and use it against you.

[tillacum]

Well I'll be darned......Patsy Schroeder and the other men/women have told us there is NO difference between women and men. Women in the military should fight on the battle field, just like the men do....according to the patsy schoeders in congress and the senate. So, what is this.......emotionally women remember things that men do not......well darn! Men remember things women do not....well, does that imply that women and men are different? Well darn! After all these years of the presstitutes and the patsy schoeders of congress telling us there is no difference, now science (?) is telling us there IS A DIFFERENCE? Well darn, I'm confused....Here I thought I was the same as my Roomey, only different do dads. I am thoroughly confused.....darn!

[Desdemona]

You are sooooo correct.

Want to keep a secret, tell Grandpa.

Want to announce it on Good Morning America, tell Grandma.

Learned that one the hard way.