A dose
of testosterone can help women to navigate better, according to a report
published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research. The research also highlights the different areas
of the brain used by men and women in wayfinding tasks.
Previous research has shown that in
specific spatial tasks, men perform better than women. But it is not clear what
role sex hormones play versus cultural conditioning and other factors.
Carl
Pintzka, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Department of Neuroscience, and colleagues wanted to investigate whether there
are any differences in brain activity when men and women orient themselves.
Using
3D goggles and a joystick, the participants had to orient themselves in a very
large virtual maze while images of their brains were continuously recorded
using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Men solved 50%
more navigational tasks
Before
the scanning session, the 18 men and 18 women spent an hour learning the layout
of the maze.
In
the scanner, they had 30 seconds to complete each of the 45 navigation tasks,
such as "find the yellow car" from different starting points.
The men
solved 50% more of the tasks than the women.
The
scans revealed that the men took shortcuts, oriented themselves more using
cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women,
suggesting that women and men have different navigational strategies, with men
using cardinal directions to a greater degree.
Pintzka
concludes that "men's sense of direction was more effective. They quite
simply got to their destination faster."
He
explains:
"If they're going to the Student Society building in
Trondheim, for example, men usually go in the general direction where it's
located. Women usually orient themselves along a route to get there, for
example, 'go past the hairdresser and then up the street and turn right after
the store'."
The study shows that using
cardinal directions is more efficient because it is a more flexible strategy.
The destination can be reached faster because the strategy depends less on
where you start.
fMRI
images of the brain showed that both men and women use large areas of the brain
when they navigate. However, the men used the hippocampus more, whereas women
used the frontal areas of the brain, illustrating the role played by the
hippocampus in using cardinal directions.
In ancient times, says Pintzka, the
fact that men were hunters and women were gatherers possibly caused their
brains to evolve differently.
Previous
studies have documented that women are better than men at finding objects
locally. In simple terms, he says, "women are faster at finding things in
the house, and men are faster at finding the house."
After
testosterone, women use hippocampus in navigation
Step two was to give a different group of women some testosterone just before solving the maze puzzles.
This time, 42 women were divided into two groups, where 21
received a drop of placebo and
21 a drop of testosterone under the tongue.
The
study was double-blinded so that neither Pintzka nor the women knew who got
what.
The
women did not solve more tasks, but their knowledge of the layout of the maze
improved, and they used the hippocampus more for navigating, just as men do.
Losing one's sense of direction is an early sign of Alzheimer's
disease.
Brain-related
diseases often differ between men and women, either prevalence or in severity,
suggesting that something is protecting or harming people of one gender,
possible relating to sex hormones.
For example, twice as many women as men are affected by
Alzheimer's disease, and one and a half times more men develop Parkinson's disease.
Pintzka
hopes that a better awareness of how men and women use different brain areas
and strategies to navigate might enhance our understanding of how Alzheimer's
develops and lead to coping strategies for those already affected.
Men and women
have different ways of navigating, according to the latest study.
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