Through history women have been the butt of smirking male jokes about their alleged inability to give directions or to read road maps. Now, researchers at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, have discovered that a woman's spatial ability, and hence her ability to read maps, actually increases during her menstrual period.
During most of her monthly cycle, higher levels of the female hormone estrogen are present and these were linked to lower scores on such things as direction finding and map reading. But when levels of the male hormone testosterone were higher, as during their period, women did better.
The interesting evolutionary question is why was it necessary for women to be better spatially orientated during their periods?
If women tended to do more gathering and men more hunting, women should be expected to be better at locating, identifying, and remembering biological kinds. And there is some evidence that this is the case: women perform better at tasks of recalling objects.
The proper domain would of course be plants, but the actual domain appears to include the stationary environment in general, so that this skill may be seen as a spatial ability. The botanical classification systems of primitive tribes bear witness to an impressive memory capacity that may be domain-specific.
The monthly cycle of hormones could conceivably have been linked to cycles of the moon, knowledge of which was vital to early hunters and gatherers.
The research could partly explain the age-old stories about witches collecting herbs during the cycle of the full moon when their "magical" powers of detection were at their peak.
Another advantage that women have is the uncanny ability (from a man's point of view) to read another person's face, and here, too, the Bochum University researchers have come up with some startling findings. Their research suggests that the brain may be functionally specialized for individual emotions.
Neuropsychologist Reiner Sprengelmeyer of Ruhr University in Bochum recently investigated this aspect of the disease by asking patients to identify the changing emotions expressed by a face on a computer screen.
He found that Huntington's patients have problems recognizing all emotions except happiness, but experience the greatest difficulty of all in identifying disgust. Sprengelmeyer believes that disgust is an emotion that arose early in our evolutionary history, perhaps as a non-verbal warning of spoiled food. And as it arose, a specific part of the brain became dedicated to its recognition. This structure, he thinks, may reside in the caudate nucleus, a part of the brain involved in cognition and movement that is always destroyed by Huntingdon's.
"There is a long-standing hypothesis that all emotions are processed by the same brain structure," he said. "Our finding suggests that there are several structures that are important for decoding different emotions."
One unanswered question remains: Why is it men never admit they've misread a road map and refuse to stop and ask somebody for directions?
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS