Archives for category: male brain

Neuroeconomics series part 4: How our brains know we want a sportscar

August 29, 2014 //
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neuroeconomics car purchasing decisions

Full rights and credits to the content extracted here from Dr Vasily Klucharev. For more information please head to https://www.coursera.org/course/neuroec

 

In this mini-series of Neuroeconomics, we look at purchasing decisions of consumers and how the activity in the brain can predict purchasing behaviour.

While some of us may think we don’t want a car, let alone car what type we’d choose, Susan Erk’s study in 2002 showed that in fact many of us can have extreme car category preference wether we know the exact brand name or not.

In the study she asked male subjects to rate different categories of cars – sportscars, limousines and small cars.

The brain activity of the Nucleus Accumbens (see below) was found to correlate directly to the car category preference; the more the brain reacted, the more they liked the ‘sportscar’, and the inverse was true for the least liked ‘small car’.

car category

Full rights and credits to the content extracted here from Dr Vasily Klucharev. For more information please head to https://www.coursera.org/course/neuroec

 

The category of product alone was enough to strongly activate the NA part of the brain, and signal a specific purchase decision, regardless of the lack of a specific brand to consider.

This is an interesting insight into the potential powerful effects of marketing to associate values to general items and spur a purchase decision within a category alone. How much value do “luxury” brands need to carry if the category itself can carry them so far?

 

Full rights and credits to the content extracted here from Dr Vasily Klucharev’s course ‘Introduction to Neuroeconomics; how the brain makes decisions’ through the National Research University Russia. Available now as an online learning course through Coursera.com. For more information please head to https://www.coursera.org/course/neuroec

 

 

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Categories Behavioural Economics, brain, EEG, gender, Gender brains, male brain, MRI, Neuroeconomics, science

What Brain Gender Are You?

November 15, 2011 //
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According to the BBC’s ‘Brain Sex‘ quiz, my brain is exactly half boy, half girl, i.e. on-balance for skills that are traditionally male (spatial, logic) and traditionally female (emotion, intuition).

It’s a weird kind of thought.

Thankfully they explain it a bit as you go through each task: in essence, the majority of the differences between male and female brains are thought to be due to hormone differences and how they affect the development of the brain.

For example, men generally outperform women at “spatial tasks”, (although many women also score extremely well), and one theory suggests that exposure to higher levels of testosterone before birth gives men an added advantage because testosterone may stimulate the development of the right hemisphere of the brain – the side that contributes most to spatial awareness.

Females, on the other hand, tend to outperform men on tasks about “object position” (e.g. “has anyone seen the car keys?”), and some scientists think that women’s oestrogen levels make them much better at noticing details of their environment and spotting changes.

This perhaps also explains why women tend to perform better at ‘The Reading The Mind In The Eyes’ test devised by Simon Baron Cohen (Sacha Baron Cohen cousin!) which measures how well men and women display empathy towards others.

The amount of testosterone we are exposed to in the womb is also thought to influence the growth of our ring fingers. This theory may explain why men’s ring fingers are often longer than their index fingers. The average male ratio is .96. On average, women’s index and ring fingers are more or less of equal length, with a ratio of around 1.00. There is even some evidence that our finger ratio can be affected by the number of older brothers we have!

Want to know which side of your brain is more dominant?

What kinds of faces you find attractive and why?

Take the quiz now and rate your own brain’s gender at bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody

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Categories brain, Brain Quizzes, gender, Gender brains, internet, male brain

Christine Lagarde can add

June 29, 2011 //
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Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF.

The recent appointment of Christine Lagarde as the first female Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund is an exciting moment for women (and men) in the world. Having the brains (and the balls) to save the sinking Euro ship is significant, and it’s clear that a woman of her experience and intellect is well and truly up for the task.

The only question that perhaps remains is… why is she the first woman? ie what took so long? Is it related to this funny notion that men are generally perceived to be better than women at maths and adding up things? And where did this (archaic) notion come from?

Inevitably, a history-making occasion like this raises the question of gender and the brain.

Long-standing studies have indeed shown that males do tend to score higher on tests of mathematical ability and spatial processing (particularly geometric thinking) than females, who score higher than males on test of verbal fluency, perceptual speed and manual dexterity (Casy, Nutall & Pezaris, 1997; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). In a study of students under age 13 with exceptional mathematical ability, boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1 (Benbow & Stanley).

Interestingly, in the past two decades, with education standards evening out between the sexes, these findings have remained consistent across global studies.

So what’s the deal? Yes there are all the cultural reasons, but anatomically is there a structural difference between the brains that allow for these patterns of mathematical and linguistic tendencies?

The answer is yes. And the secret can be seen in fMRI scans of male and female brains.

Studies at John Hopkins University, U.S., have found that the area called the IPL – Inferior Parietal Lobule  – which is located above your ears, and spans both the right and left hemispheres of your head, is generally responsible for allowing the brain to process senses and be selective in its attention to them.

Across large data samples, the IPL has been found overall to be 5% larger in males than females. This is the part of the brain found to be larger than normal in Albert Einstein among other physicists and mathematicians, indicating that it is related to mathematical ability.

In males it appears larger on the left hemisphere (responsible for calculating time and speed and rotating 3D images) than the right, while in women it is larger on the right hemisphere (responsible for spatial processing, perception of emotions, and the ability to sense relationships between body parts).

And the anatomical differences continue in language.

In 1995, language studies on males using a rhyming task activated the Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe. This showed lateralisation – ie the function was specific to one side or hemisphere of the brain.

However in females, the rhyming task activated BOTH sides of the brain in the frontal areas, showing that for them, language was less lateralised.

Women’s tendency to empathise rather than strategise (male approach) results in greater empathy and mental skills that are the primary reasons why they are better at languages and why they are better judges of character. Also, women naturally dominate primatology, which, like mothering of babies, requires understanding and reading the minds of individuals with whom they cannot communicate by language.

This might definitely help Christine.

We wish her the best of luck for the job ahead; negotiating through tough diplomacy across language and culture barriers, while also balancing sliding budgets and making lasting fiscal decisions must make her grey matter pretty tough stuff.

Thank you to http://www.cerebromente.org.br for his research and to Burton, Westen and Kowalski ‘Psychology’, 2009.

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Categories brain, gender, Gender brains, male brain, politics
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