ENTERTAINMENT REALM

This is a book that all women should read. All men should read it. There IS a difference between male and female brains and the scientific research has been done to back that up. The Female Brain contains a plethora of information. I didn’t intend to write a formal review. I just thought I’d post some of the information I highlighted as I read this.

The principal hub of both emotion and memory formation—the hippocampus—is also larger in the female brain, as is the brain circuitry for language and observing emotions in others. This means that women are, on average, better at expressing emotions and remembering the details of emotional events. [pg. 5]

If you’re a girl, you’ve been programmed to make sure you keep social harmony. This is a matter of life and death to the brain, even if it’s not so important in the twenty-first century. [pg. 21]

During puberty, a girl’s entire biological raison d’être is to become sexually desirable. She begins judging herself against her peers and media images of other attractive females. [pg. 31]

Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers in a girl’s brain. . . Dopamine is a neurochemical that stimulates the motivation and pleasure circuits in the brain. Estrogen at puberty increases dopamine and oxytocin production in girls. Oxytocin is a neurohormone that triggers and is triggered by intimacy. [pg. 37]

In short-term couplings, for example, men are chasers and women are choosers. That’s not sex stereotyping. It’s our inheritance from ancestors who learned, over millions of years, how to propagate their genes. [pg. 59]

Many sex therapists say that, for women, foreplay is everything that happens in the twenty-four hours proceeding penile insertion. For men, it’s everything that happens three minutes before. Since many parts of a woman’s brain are active at once, she must get into the mood by first relaxing and reconnecting positively with her partner. [pg. 82]

Gut feelings are not just free-floating emotional states but actual physical sensations that convey meaning to certain areas in the brain. [pg. 120]

–Amy Steele

Title: The Female Brain
Author: Luann Brizendine, M.D.
Pages: 269
Release Date: 2006
Publisher: Broadway Books
Review source: my copy
Rating: 4/5