{"id":8766,"date":"2015-12-14T07:54:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T07:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=8766"},"modified":"2015-12-14T09:59:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T09:59:02","slug":"men-have-better-sense-of-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/men-have-better-sense-of-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"Men ‘have better sense of direction’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PhD<\/a>
Researcher and PhD candidate Carl Pintzka<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Men have a better sense of direction than women, a Norwegian study has found<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Men consistently performed better than women during way-finding tasks in a virtual environment which they had just learned.<\/p>\n

Using fMRI brain-scanning, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study.<\/p>\n

To find out if the difference was down to cultural factors or sex-specific hormones, the researchers gave some of the women a small dose of testosterone under their tongue. Several of them were then able to orient themselves better in the four cardinal directions.<\/p>\n

“Men’s sense of direction was more effective. They quite simply got to their destination faster,” says Carl Pintzka, a medical doctor and PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology<\/a><\/strong> (NTNU)’s Department of Neuroscience.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The men and women studied a virtual maze and were then set tasks. Men’s routes in blue, women’s routes in red. Credit: NTNU<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eighteen men and 18 women first took an hour to learn the layout of a maze before the scanning session began. In the MRI scanner, they were given 30 seconds for each of the 45 navigation tasks. One of the tasks, for example, was to “find the yellow car” from different starting points.<\/p>\n

The men solved 50 per cent more of the tasks than the women<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Pintzka concludes that women and men have different navigational strategies. Men, he found, use cardinal directions during navigation to a greater degree.<\/p>\n

“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’,” he says.<\/p>\n

The study shows 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.<\/p>\n

The fMRI brain images showed both men and women using large but different areas of the brain when they navigate. The men used the hippocampus more, whereas women used their frontal areas to a greater extent.
\n“That’s in sync with the fact that the hippocampus is necessary to make use of cardinal directions,” says Pintzka.<\/p>\n

Depressingly, he has to explain his findings in evolutionary terms. He suggests:<\/p>\n

\"'Men<\/a>
‘Men are faster at finding the house’ – fotolia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“In ancient times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Therefore, our brains probably evolved differently.”<\/p>\n

What if our brains were designed differently by Almighty God and that men and women have simply decided to do those things for which we are better suited for our mutual benefit?<\/p>\n

It is surely less plausible that our brains followed our activities than that our activities followed our brains.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, other researchers have documented that women are better at finding objects locally than men. “In simple terms, women are faster at finding things in the house, and men are faster at finding the house,” Pintzka says.<\/p>\n

The results support\u00a0the Biblical model that men and women have complementary strengths and work together rather than the feminist doctrine popular in government and the broadcast media that the sexes have identical abilities\u00a0and are in competition with each other.<\/p>\n

The directional sense findings are part of Pintzka’s doctoral thesis on how the brain functions differently in men and women. Let’s pray his funding continues.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Men have a better sense of direction than women, a Norwegian study has found. Men consistently performed better than women during way-finding tasks in a virtual environment which they had just learned. Using fMRI brain-scanning, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[1677,1680,1542,1678,1679,43],"class_list":["post-8766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","tag-carl-pintzka","tag-department-of-neuroscience-christian-voice","tag-feminism","tag-norwegian-university-of-science-and-technology","tag-ntnu","tag-stephen-green"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":8,"rttpg_category":"Feminism<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Men have a better sense of direction than women, a Norwegian study has found. Men consistently performed better than women during way-finding tasks in a virtual environment which they had just learned. Using fMRI brain-scanning, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}