Study shows different brain activity between boys and girls, no surprise there eh lol
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1911103,00.htmlPardon the sexism, but a question: Why are girls so girly?
For the better part of the past half-century, feminists, their opponents and armies of academics have debated the differences between men and women. Only in the past few years have scientists been able to use imaging technology to look inside men's and women's heads to investigate whether those stereotypical gender differences have roots in the brain. No concrete results have emerged from these studies yet, but now a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of children offers at least one explanation for some common tween social behaviors: girls are hardwired to care about one-on-one relationships with their BFFs (best friends forever), while the brains of boys are more attuned to group dynamics and competition with other boys. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)
The study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Georgia State University, begins with a premise that every parent of a tween knows: as kids emerge into puberty, their focus changes dramatically. They care less about their families and more about their peers.
So what's actually going on inside these young brains? Scientists asked 34 healthy kids, ages 8 to 17, to look at pictures of 40 other boys and girls and judge how much they would like to interact with them online. The kids were asked to rate those in the photos on a scale from 0 ("not interested at all") to 100 ("very interested"). The NIMH scientists told the kids that their ratings would be revealed to the boys and girls in the pictures, and the scientists said they would arrange online chats between the kids and those they liked. The chats were supposed to occur two weeks later.
