By IANS
New York : Men and women tend to react differently to stress, with men adopting a “fight-or-flee” attitude and women using a “tend-and-befriend” strategy.
That’s the conclusion of a new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania on how men and women differ in their neural responses to psychological stress.
According to the study, the different reactions to stress in men and women can be traced back to the way humans evolved.
Down the ages, men may have had to confront a stressor either by overcoming or fleeing it, while women may have responded by nurturing offspring and affiliating with social groups to maximise species survival.
“We found that different parts of the brain activate with different spatial and temporal profiles for men and women when they are faced with performance-related stress,” says J.J. Wang, lead author of the study.
As part of the study, 16 women and 16 men received MRI scans before, during and after they underwent a challenging arithmetic task.
In men, it was found that stress was associated with increased cerebral blood flow (CBF) in the right prefrontal cortex and CBF reduction in the left orbitofrontal cortex.
In women, the limbic system — a part of the brain primarily involved in emotion — was activated when they were under stress.
Both men and women’s brain activation lasted beyond the stress task, but the lasting response in the female brain was stronger.
“Women have twice the rate of depression and anxiety disorders compared to men,” noted Wang.
“Knowing that women respond to stress by increasing activity in brain regions involved with emotion, and that these changes last longer than in men, may help us begin to explain the gender differences in the incidence of mood disorders.”