House of Eratosthenes

You know all the times that men complain about women talking too much? Apparently there’s a biological explanation for the reason why women are chattier than men. Scientists have discovered that women possess higher levels of a “language protein” in their brains, which could explain why females are so talkative.

Previous research has shown that women talk almost three times as much as men. In fact, an average woman notches up 20,000 words in a day, which is about 13,000 more than the average man. In addition, women generally speak more quickly and devote more brainpower to speaking. Yet before now, researchers haven’t been able to biologically explain why this is the case.

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Now, they can. New findings conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and published in The Journal of Neuroscience show that a certain protein may be the culprit.

In 2001, a gene called FOXP2 appeared to be essential for the production of speech. In order to test this protein, the team, led by J. Michael Bowers and Margaret McCarthy, looked at young rat pups. These animals emit cries in the ultrasonic range when separated from their mothers. The team recorded the cries over five minutes in groups of 4-day-old male and female rats that had been separated from their mothers. They found that male pups had up to twice as much of the protein FOXP2 in regions of the brain known to be involved in vocalization–perhaps an unsurprising finding since researchers noted that males made twice as many cries as females.

Next, the researchers wanted to test their findings in humans. They conducted a small study on human children aged four to five years who had died in accidents less than 24 hours previously. They then analyzed the amount of FOXP2 protein in the brains of these children. In the end, the researchers found 30 percent more FOXP2 protein in the brains of the girls.

The comments under this can be — depending on your frame-of-mind and your perspective — quite funny. But yes, this also gives a whole new frame of reference for the whole “talk about problems versus try to fix them” thing.

I don’t like it when my husband tries to solve a problem or issue that I just want to discuss. I like to express my feelings about a topic or situation. During those times I really just want to hear myself talk so I can make sense of the situation. What I don’t like is when my husband sees the issue as a dilemma and starts trying to solve the “problem” before I’ve even considered it to be problematic.

++headshake++ Poor Kelly-Ward’s-Husband guy. He’s probably spending several nights a week what the heck he did to get the latest browbeating. I can hear it now: “But I’m just trying to come up with a solution to the problem…”

YES, it’s big enough of a problem to bother you with, and NO, it’s not a big enough problem that it has to be fixed. BOTH of those. Gotta learn your place in the problems-to-be-solved pecking order, bud. I used to have a wife like that…used to…

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The Woman-Talking ProteinWednesday, February 20th, 2013

The Woman-Talking Protein
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013