The Brain in Love: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life by Daniel G. Amen

women. In language, men tend to be totally left sided, more detail oriented, and more directly to the point. Women, more often than not, use both sides, and tend to be more fluent, which may be why they have more to say. When husbands and wives get into arguments, their brain hemisphere activation styles often make problems worse. Because women use more words, men often become overwhelmed in disagreements and say insensitive things like “What’s the point?” or “Specifically, what do you want?” These statements infuriate women and make communication even more of a struggle. They know the point, they just have more to say about it with the extra input from the right side.
    The female hormone estrogen encourages brain cells to develop more connections within the brain and between the two hemispheres. Because of these extra connections, women are better at multitasking. They can talk on the phone while watching TV, cooking dinner, and checking their e-mail. Men, on the other hand, are more compartmentalized and do best when they do only one thing at time. When a man stops his car to read a map, he asks everyone else to be quiet and turns down the radio. This allows him to focus. His wife usually doesn’t understand, as her brain can do, and actually enjoys doing, many things at a time.
    Left-sided strokes, which affect the language area, tend to affect men more than women because many women have language on both sides of the brain. In one brain-imaging study, whenasked to judge whether nonsense words rhymed, men used only the left side of the brain, where more than half of the women used both sides. In another study done at the University of Indiana, when listening to a novel being read, men used the left side of the brain, where women typically used both sides.
    The limbic system, or emotional brain, tends to be larger in women. The limbic system is the emotional bonding center of the brain. Therefore, it is no accident that women in overwhelming numbers are the primary caretakers for children. Likewise, women are primary caretakers for the elderly; 70 percent of elderly people who need care get it from a woman. The larger limbic size makes bonding easier for women. Women tend to have more friends in life, they go to church more often than men, and they pray (bonding with God) more than men. Women have a larger nesting instinct than men. They have a greater biological need to have their houses in order. When a couple moves, it is generally the woman who feels unsettled until everything is put away. Women are usually primary caretakers for the home and take on the bulk of housework. With the larger limbic size comes a greater incidence of depression. After puberty, females are three times more likely to develop depression than males. Women attempt to kill themselves three times more often than men. Yet men, due to lack of bonding and use of more violent means, kill themselves three times more often than women.
    In another brain study, the inferior parietal lobe was found to be larger in men, especially on the left side. This part of the brain estimates time, judges speed, visualizes objects in 3-D (such as catching a football thrown toward you), and solves math problems. Our direction sense is influenced by this part of the brain. Men are usually better at directions. Women, because of their greater access to the right hemisphere, are better at knowing when they are lost. Women are also better at knowing when problems are present. Psychiatrists see three times the number of women as men. Not because women have more problems, but because women are more aware that a problem exists and more willing toseek help. Women, more often than men, call marital therapists for help with a troubled marriage, and they bring their children to the child psychiatrist much more than fathers do. Seventy-five percent of the time, divorces are filed by women.
    Recent research has shown that men may have a tendency to be more unrealistically