Communication Linda, my stepmom, has what she calls the "50 per cent rule." It goes like this: men hear half of what you tell them, remember half of what they hear and repeat half of what they remember.
Cathy Campbell, 43, a career counsellor and mother of two in Halifax, can vouch for that. She recalls when she and Mike, her husband, bumped into an old friend. Cathy asked about the friend’s sister, who had cancer. "[The friend] looked at me funny and said, 'Well, I told Mike last week that she’s terminal now. Didn’t he tell you?' It was terrible news. Why didn’t Mike remember to tell me?"
Maybe he couldn’t because his brain, like most male brains, doesn’t attach the same degree of meaning to emotional information. Whether it’s distressing news or an exhilarating moment, women are able to recall emotional details more vividly because their amygdala – the brain’s mistress of emotion – is more sensitive to emotional nuance and more likely to send messages to be tagged as a memory by the hippocampus. "The biggest sex difference is what the male and female brain is paying attention to," says Dr. Stephan Hamann, a University of Toronto–educated cognitive neuroscientist now at Emory University in Atlanta. "Men do hear the message but they just don’t attach as much emotional meaning to it."
Empathy If there’s one thing that Chris Vacher, 30, a church music director in Orangeville, Ont., can’t tolerate, it’s gossip. So when he heard his wife Sonya, 27, discussing a friend’s divorce, he let her know how he felt about it.
Gossiping? More like empathizing, says Sonya. "Women need to have background information about each other," she says, "because we need to understand."
According to research, she’s right. Some scientists believe that women’s greater number of mirror neurons increases their empathy. In a British study at the University College London, researchers administered weak and strong electric shocks to female subjects and used an MRI to measure their brain’s response to the pain. Later, their partners received the same treatment. The women were told how strong the mens' jolt was. According to the MRI results, the women’s brains reacted to the knowledge of their partners’ pain as if it was their own.
Our daily talk-fests with female friends do something positive for us, too; we feel enjoyment, because when we communicate, the brain releases dopamine (the feel-good hormone) and oxytocin (better known as the bonding hormone). "We’re not talking about a small amount of pleasure," says Brizendine. "[Our hormonal response] is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside an orgasm."
