M. Alagha

Gender Differences In Brain Response To Pain:

According to ”UCLA’s Center for Neurovisceral Sciences and Women’s Health studies how the brain, stress and emotions impact the development of disorders that affect mainly women”.

• Gender differences in brain responses to pain may have evolved as part of a more general difference in stress responses between men and women.
• Men’s cognitive areas may be more highly triggered because of the early male role in defending the homestead, where in response to stress and pain, the brain launched a calculated  fight-or-flight reaction.
• The female limbic regions may be more responsive under threat because of their importance in triggering a nurturing and protecting response for the young, leading to a more emotion-based response in facing pain and stress.
  

• Gender Differences In Brain Response To danger:
  A team from Krakow, in Poland, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activity
  • Men showed activity in areas which dealt with what action they should take to avoid or confront danger.
    
  • But the study, presented to the Radiological Society of North America, found more activity in the emotional centres of women’s brains.
    

Women tend to have a more emotional response

• Genders were shown images of objects and images from ordinary life designed to evoke different emotional states:
  Fight or flight response:
  • While viewing the negative images,
    • women showed stronger and more extensive activity in the left thalamus (This is an area which relays sensory information to the pain and pleasure centers of the brain).
      
    • Men showed more activity in an area of the brain called the left insula, which plays a key role in controlling involuntary functions, including respiration, heart rate and digestion (activity in this area primes the body to either run from danger, or confront it head on – the so-called “fight or flight response).
      
    • Researcher Dr Andrzej Urbanik said: “This might signal that when confronted with dangerous situations, men are more likely than women to take action.”

  Positive response:

  • While viewing positive images,
    • Women showed stronger activity in an area of the brain associated with memory.
      
    • With men, the stronger activity was recorded in an area associated with visual processing.
      

Dr Urbanik believes these differences suggest women may analyse positive stimuli in a broader social context and associate positive images with a particular memory.
For instance, viewing a picture of a smiling toddler might evoke memories of a woman’s own child at this age. Conversely, male responses tend to be less emotional.

• Gender Difference in Aggression:
  Males tend to show far more “direct” aggression
  
  Females tend to show more “indirect” (or “relational”, covert) aggression
  

Facing Reality
Contrary to the wishful thinking of feminists, bisexuals, and transsexuals, there are profound differences between males and females–and those differences are programmed within the DNA from the moment of conception. The brains of females and males are clearly “sexed,” and testosterone and estrogen are the juices that augment maleness and femaleness.

To be sure, gender-distorting prenatal abnormalities do affect some individuals, and may increase the likelihood that such an afflicted person will later self-identify as transgendered or transsexual (and in some cases, homosexual).

But barring such unfortunate developmental errors— which we should not normalize as if they were not disruptions in normal growth and development–the simple truth remains: maleness and femaleness are innate and integral parts of our human design.

See Also…

Gender Differences: Intro & Physical Differences

Gender Differences:  Hormones

Gender Differences: Brain Differences

Gender differences: psychological differences & Health risks

Posted on April 4, 2011 at 8:40 AM in In-Depth   |  RSS feed |   Respond   |   Trackback URL