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The couple with two brains
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___First, a disclaimer. Regardless of how astounding what I’m about to report may seem, it is true. Despite all intuition you may have to the contrary, science has indeed unraveled one of the gre
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MARK WINGFIELD
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at mysteries of male-female relations.
___ I read it in the newspaper, so it must be true. Not only that, it was reported by the Associated Press. You can take it to the bank.
___ Drum roll, please.
___ New research shows the reason men never stop to ask for directions when lost may be because they really do know how to find their way better than women.
___ And who am I to argue with science?
___ The story said: "Researchers scanned the brains of 12 men and 12 women as they tried to escape a three-dimensional virtual-reality maze. … The men got out of the maze in an average of two minutes and 22 seconds, versus an average of three minutes and 16 seconds for the women. That fits with previous studies in animals and people that suggest males navigate better in an unfamiliar environment."
___ It all has to do with a little banana-shaped part on each side of the brain called the hippocampus. Seems men use both their hippocampuses (or would that be hippocampi?), while women use only one.
___ We’ve heard all these years about women’s intuition. Now we learn that men are intuitive as well--and in an area where men have been scorned by women no doubt since the beginning of time.
___ So the next time you’re out cruising as a couple or family, and the female thinks the male is lost and should stop at the nearest gas station for direction, just remember that the male intuitively knows the right direction to go--even if it doesn’t appear so.
___ It’s not that men have all the mental gifts, mind you. A female psychologist asked to respond to the study defended her sisters by noting that women do outperform men in other mental tasks, such as creating a list of words that begin with a given letter.
___ A word of advice to men, though. If you’re driving the car to an unknown destination and attempt to distract attention from the fact that you’re hopelessly lost by testing this mental prowess in the woman sitting beside you, be very careful what letter you choose to ask her to expound upon.
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___What Mark failed to mention was that although the women in the study didn’t use the left hippocampus in their brains, they did use an outer part of the brain called the right prefrontal cortex, which the men did not use.
___ S
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ALISON WINGFIELD
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o they both got out of the maze--just at different times and using different brain functions. What’s the hurry? Maybe the women stopped to smell the roses more often.
___ The study also said that using these different brain functions might explain the differences in how men and women handle information about the space around them. Women rely more on landmarks to navigate (turn left at McDonald’s) while men lean toward using geometry. Which explains why I do better when a woman gives me directions to a place instead of a man.
___ And to be honest, I do not have a good sense of direction. The only places I am better than Mark at finding are restrooms. Name a department store or mall, and I’ll tell you where the restrooms are (unless of course, they change the department they’re in, and then I’m sunk).
___ Leave it to men to make this navigational study into a contest. Why is it that everything has to be a competition?
___ We went through a phase where our boys turned everything they did into a contest: who could eat their cereal first, who got dressed first, who took their shower the fastest. I admit I used some of this to my advantage so they would hurry up their morning routine. But after awhile, making everything a race can be frustrating and inevitably leads to someone getting upset (the "loser") and an argument ensuing ("He cheated," or "No fair").
___ Navigating through life, we encounter many blind corners and dark alleys. While we may not always have an accurate map for the road ahead, we do have a landmark we can fix our eyes on and follow through the maze. Jesus is our guide, no matter what part of the brain we use.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly.
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