Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Sunday, January 09 2011 @ 12:03 pm
Last modified on
We now know that women experience adolescence twice in their lives, in a phenomenon called "perimenopause."
We now know that birth and pregnancy cause changes in the brain as well as the body.
And we now know that women become more interested in engaging in potentially risky behavior as they grow older, unlike their male counterparts who show an increased interest in stability and relationships as they age.
It's time to continue our countdown of the 10 things that every man must know about the intriguingly complex female brain.
6. A woman's sex drive is more fickle than a man's. In order for a woman to become aroused, particularly if orgasm is the goal, certain areas of her brain must shut down. Unfortunately, it's very easy for those areas to turn back on again. Large problems, like anger or trust issues, and major events like pregnancy and menopause can disrupt a woman's sex drive as well as seemingly inconsequential circumstances (like chilly feet, according to LiveScience's original article). Dr. Louann Brizendine of the University of California in San Francisco recommends planning ahead when trying to keep a woman turned on. "For guys," she notes, "foreplay is everything that happens three minutes before insertion. For women, it is everything that happens 24 hours beforehand."
5. Women avoid aggression. Anne Campbell of Durham University theorizes that "women may have evolved to avoid physical aggression because of the greater dependence of children on their survival." The tendency to avoid conflict in favor of forming strategic associations and dealing with confrontation in indirect ways is known as the "tend or befriend" response, the feminine equivalent of the "fight or flight" response in men.
4. Female brains respond to pain and fear differently than male brains. Studies have shown that the female brain is more sensitive to these sensations than the male brain, and that "the female brain is not only more responsive to small amounts of stress, but is less able to habituate to high levels of stress." Findings such as these potentially explain why women are more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders, PTSD, and depression.
3. Women dislike conflict, but dislike unresponsiveness even more. Women are hyper-sensitive when it comes to understanding interpersonal cues, a skill that they have probably developed in order to avoid conflict more effectively. Because of their strong communication skills, women often find it particularly frustrating to receive no response whatsoever. In fact, receiving a negative response can oftentimes be more desirable than receiving no response at all!
2. Women might not be mind readers, but they are extremely intuitive. This seemingly "psychic" power has its roots in biology, says Brizendine, not magic. "Over the course of evolution," Robin Nixon writes, "women may have been selected for their ability to keep young preverbal humans alive...without it being directly communicated. This is one explanation for why women consistently score higher than men on tests that require reading nonverbal cues."
1. PMS is not the only way a woman's menstrual cycle affects her. A woman's hormone levels are in a constant state of fluctuation, meaning that her "outlook, energy and sensitivity" are also continuously changing. According to Dr. Brizendine, women tend to feel sassier approximately 10 days after menstruation, right before ovulation begins. They also tend to dress sexier, as an influx of testosterone and estrogen causes them to unconsciously seek out sexual opportunities while they are in a fertile state. A week later, progesterone rises, causing women to feel, in Brizendine's words, "like cuddling up with a hot cup of tea and a good book." Finally, in the following week, progesterone withdrawal makes women irritable and emotional. In most instances, a woman's mood is at its worst 12-24 hours before her period begins.