The Female Brain

A brain for communication
Physically, a woman's brain is smaller than that of a man, even after correcting for body size, 'and that he thought for centuries that women were inferior or less intelligent than their male counterparts. Today we know that, despite the smaller size, all have the same number of cells. Therefore, they are tightly packed cells. And are distributed differently. If you stick to a purely physical observation, we see that in the brain centers for language and hearing women are 11% more neurons than men, and also the greater your hippocampus where emotion form and memory. They also have more brain circuitry for language and observing emotions of others. With all that many researchers explain that the female brain that configuration is what makes women more dialogues, more easily able to read the faces of the party and remember best the details that have to do with the sentimental aspect. So many inferred that language and conversation is very important for women. The journalist Teresa stated in his book Old Men. How to use examples of the communication skills of women, saying that better speak foreign languages​​, they read better and understand before you read, are more verbal fluency using more subordinate clauses, mixing various topics in the same conversation, better vocalize and include feelings in their dissertations. To Louann Brizendine, MD and author of The Female Brain, this body has a unique skill she summarizes: outstanding mental agility, deep involvement in friendship, almost magical ability to read faces and tone of voice as emotions and moods, and ability to defuse conflicts.

How is your brain works?

The language of the brain is the image. This is how it works inside and the information is grouped.
We have two hemispheres, left and right. We make both hemispheres work simultaneously but that is very difficult. Mainly women and men we differ in that we use each different part and very different ways of working or mixing the contents of each other.
One thing is very important and should be at the same level. It is no use having a very good IQ if not offset by an emotional quotient. That is why we must work them equally. This is influenced by personal and social relationships.

What happens in the brain when a decision is correct?


Choose between 'yes' or 'no'. What drives us to decide? What are the mechanisms that the brain uses for it? Little is known about this issue that draws attention both to the researchers, who, over time, reveal increasingly complex tracks on this selection process. Now, a new study published in Neuron, reveals that when making good decisions increases activity in the hippocampus.

So far, the theory is that the prefrontal cortex plays an important role in the decision-making. "Years ago we study, in collaboration with British and American colleagues, patients with frontal lesions and we conclude that the prefrontal lobe (especially the right) was very involved in the correct decisions," said Juan Carlos Garcia- Moncó, President of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN).

Now, for the first time, a group of scientists from University College London discovered that the hippocampus (a brain area associated with memory) and its interaction with the prefrontal lobe are key to learning to make decisions.

"No wonder that the hippocampus is activated in these cognitive processes. Responsible for archiving instant information and this is very important when evaluating a situation (for example, a chess move) and make the following decision "argues José Antonio Portellano Pérez, Professor of Psychobiology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a specialist in neuropsychology.

Keep in mind, the expert says, that "when one makes a decision, integrating everything learned in the memory of both long and short term, which is distributed by different brain areas. Hence, the complexity of the process" .

The main author of this research, Dharshan Kumaran, says, "probably the hippocampus is responsible for creating and saving basics you then pass to the prefrontal cortex, where they are extracted and used as occasion requires., For example, in circumstances to choose either option could jeopardize our money. " Furthermore, the neural circuits involving the hippocampus are also responsible for the use of the basic concepts acquired in new situations.

The experts came to this conclusion after checking the brain function of 27 participants involved in the study. The main test that consisted underwent predict, through images displayed on the computer, the weather after observing the night sky.

Firstly, brain activity was assessed by a technique of imaging (positron emission tomography or PET), thereby determining which areas experiencing increased functional activity. In addition, we evaluated whether the estimate atmospheric by participants was correct or not. Finally, it was concluded that the right decisions, the hippocampus showed increased activity. The action of this part of the brain can make important decisions about what to do in different circumstances.

Unexplored areas
As well known mechanisms of language, not so with this cognitive process. "Participants explored areas and the level of complexity is such that they are not always the same areas responsible," says the Moncó Garcia, adding that more studies are needed to point in the same direction to draw definitive conclusions.

According to experts, these findings help decipher what brain structures involved in higher cognitive functions (language, memory, reasoning ...), and choose from several options. The only clinical implication is that qualifies the Scientific Committee Chairman of SEN, is that, "at the unit level, these results help to understand that a person with certain brain injuries may begin to have difficulties in decision-making. Help understand diseases like Alzheimer's. "

You know how the brain works

We have always complained that men are insensitive, they do not listen and are not able to remember important dates or do more than one thing at a time. Believe it or not these actions are far from voluntary, have a medical explanation.
Differences also of physical between a man and a woman are in the brain. The fact that we naturally be more sensitive to them only because our mind works differently.
The "amygdala" is a central part of the brain is much larger in the case of the men. It is the central point of male aggression not violence. This means that men take more actions than women.
In ours, however, the famous amygdala focuses our emotions, more blood flows that area. In addition, women will be supplying several of the brain at once, which means that we pay attention to more than one thing at once.
Did you past sometimes you talk to a man and seemed not to hear? You must be clear that it's nothing against you, but they occur in a curious phenomenon called "lateralization", ie, only blood comes next to the brain that are paying attention, so if watching TV instead waits finish making their activity to focus its attention on you.
The neuropsychologist, Monica Bulnes said that the human brain does when magazines focus, which is why we can not do several things at once.
He also explained that his memory is not tied to emotions and to our surprise, have testosterone increases 30 times a day, why talk more about sex than us.
Another important point to note is that women do not like to talk too much. Furthermore, marearlos and disturb prefer to be more direct and always go to the point.
This also applies to the fact that his memory is more visual than emotional. The activity allows your brain to remember for a long time a situation, nor endure if not entertaining. They are decisive and quickly get bored of any activity, a clear example of this is the takeover of the remote.

As well the brain functions of the timid

Agatha Christie had a permanent fear to be interviewed and appear in public. And the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was a shy consummated until age 42 that sent his friend Oliver Girondo to read his speeches. Romantics were also Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, the inventor Orville Wright or writer Raymond Carver.

Now a team of scientists has shown that shy people perceive the world differently and show a stronger brain activity to certain stimuli. Researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, Southeast University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences selected 16 people and asked them to confront two portraits similar to observe the details. Meanwhile, examined their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Shy people spent more time looking at the images and "showed high activity in brain areas concerned with visual and sensory perceptions associate". In short, "the brain not only dealt with the visual perception, but was activated for further elaboration of the information," explained the researchers, who released their findings in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

According conclude, the brains of shy people perceive the outside world differently because of the "sensitivity to sensory perception" (SPS). This trait is characterized by sensitivity to internal and external stimuli, including social and emotional, and implies a predisposition to shyness could affect 6% of the world population. This type of subjects, the study authors added, needs more time to observe and reflect before acting. And normally bothered by the noise and the crowds more than the average, are more sensitive to caffeine and startle easily, all side effects of their innate tendency to pay more attention to detail.

How the Brain Works

From behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, researchers at the University College London have traced how conceptual knowledge emerges in the human brain and how it will guide decision making. Man is the only animal able to use prior knowledge and apply them in new situations. This is made possible through the use of concepts, which are formed by abstracting the common essence of several distinct entities, but related. Although there is no doubt that the human form and concepts used constantly, not much is known about how conceptual knowledge is created in the brain or how it guides us to make efficient decisions.Although a Poodle and a Golden Retriever look very different from each other, we can easily appreciate their similar attributes because they can be recognized as instances of a particular concept, in this case, a dog, "says Dharshan Kumaran, lead study author and researcher Center for Neuroimaging Wellcome Trust at the University College London (UK).
For some time, studies suggest that the hippocampus, a brain structure with a unique ability to create networks that allow linking multiple memories, plays an important role in the acquisition of conceptual knowledge, but so far there has been little concrete evidence support this claim.
"Our study shows the ability of people to discover the conceptual structure of their visual experiences, and reveals how the regions called" memory "of the hippocampus collaborate with" decision modules "in the prefrontal lobe to put to use this information," concludes Kumaran.
The research group Kumaran designed an experimental paradigm that has allowed them to track the emergence and application of conceptual knowledge. Participants played a game in which they had the opportunity to win money by correctly predicting whether sun or rain would, based on the appearance of the night sky, represented by patterns on a computer screen.
"At the beginning of the experiment, participants simply memorized the outcome associated with each pattern in isolation," say the authors. "However, instantly realized that groups of patterns were conceptually related. Then, participants were able to solve the task, and even successfully applied their knowledge to a different setting where the concepts were similar, but the patterns themselves were new"

10 things you should know about how your brain

2012 is the Year of Neuroscience in Spain. Here's selection of 10 things scientists learned about the brain in 2011 and you should know.
Eating less keeps the brain youngA molecule called CREB1, which activates when the diet is restrictive, starts to genes linked to longevity and good brain function.

The size of your network of friends on Facebook and the size of your brain are relatedThe number of friends you have in the social network Facebook is proportional to the size of certain regions of the brain. This emerges from a study conducted by scientists at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UK).

The success and failure throughout the brain activatedThe signals generated in the brain when a person when successful or when it fails are not processed in a restricted area of ​​the cerebral cortex. Neural connections in these cases extend virtually throughout the brain, according to a study by Yale University that was published in the journal Neuron.
Without vitamin B12, the brain shrinksFish, meat, milk and eggs are the main sources of vitamin B12, also called cobalamin. A lack of this substance in the diet can cause the brain to lose brain cells and develop cognitive problems, according to a study published in Neurology.


To keep your brain is tired, exercise Regular exercise increases both in muscle cells and neurons in the number of mitochondria, the organelles responsible for providing energy to the cells. This reduces mental fatigue, according to a study by the University of South Carolina.

How our brain remembers the important moments?Neuroscientists at the University of New York (USA) have identified the parts of the brain we use to remember the sequence of events within an episode of our lives, like a party or wedding. The study, published in Science, enhances our understanding of how memories are processed.


The human brain is shrinkingThe human brain has shrunk over the past 30,000 years. Specifically, the latest measurements show that the average volume of the brain of Homo sapiens in this period decreased by 10%, ie from 1500-1359 cubic inches, the equivalent of a tennis ball.

Distracted people have more gray matter in the brain People who are distracted by a fly and barely manage to keep the attention on one thing can blame a group of neurons in the superior parietal lobe, according to a work published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

So the brain reacts when expectations are not metThe human brain is able to adapt to the unexpected because it has a network of neurons that makes predictions about the world around us and also monitors how accurate are these predictions. The core network that is known in the orbitofrontal cortex, a brain area located above the eyes.
Identify the area of ​​the brain that controls the shameResearchers at the University of California (USA) have managed to identify the part of the brain that is put into action when we feel shame. This is the anterior cingulate cortex pregenual, made public this year as the authors at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology held in Hawaii