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Nov 28, 2006 10:08 pm US/Pacific
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Study: Women Talk 3 Times More Than Men
by Mike Sugerman
(CBS 5)
Here's a news flash. Women talk more than men. Duh.
"We have more emotions. We have more things to talk about," one woman explained.
A man that CBS 5 talked to differed on his take. "Women always have an opinion. And their opinion usually is another opinion," he said.
It's not stop the presses news. But a San Francisco researcher is gaining international recognition for why that is. Dr Louann Brizendine runs the woman's mood and hormone clinic at UCSF.
Her book, the Female Brain, is based on her studies and a review of the literature...and it's about to be printed into 17 languages.
"So, when we're born, we're born with male type brain circuits or female type brain circuits," Dr. Brizendine said.
The female brain, she says, is hard wired to talk, a lot. 20,000 words a day about three times the amount of men.
"We do what's called overlapping speech a lot, where we talk over each other all the time," she said. "Men don't like that. They think we're interupting them all the time."
Men and women brains are 99 percent the same, but 1 percent difference is a doozy.
She says women have more brain cells devoted to communication and emotion...espeically different in men and women, the amigdala and hypocampus. And in fact, talking can set off a rush of chemicals in the female brain that is not unlike heroin for addicts.
"Espeically in those years, 13, 14, 15, in that age group, they feel like if their mothers cut them off if they can't talk with their girlfriends, they actually feel accutely depressed," Brizendine said.
Look at it this way: women have an eight lane highway for processing emotion, she said. Men, a country road. And they need to talk things out. Men, listen up, to at least some of those 20,000 thousand words.
"If you want a nice life at home, and a nice sexual life at home, you should listen a little more to what your wife is saying," Brizendine said.
That's my story. If Dana King had reported it, there's no telling how long it would have gone.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)