His Brain, Her Brain – Preliminary Insights

In their book, His Brain, Her Brain, Walt and Barb Larimore tackle the
newest research in better understanding marriage by delving into the brain
differences between males and females. Drawing from the studies of other experts
in this field, the Larimores offer believers a more rounded explanations of this
intriguing study as they outline what they believe is the divinely designed brain
physiology of women and men.
Although they reference several scientific and medical studies, their material
is delivered in a simple and engaging format, addressing technical, philosophical
and relational insights on the nature of each gender's brain and its development.
The book is broken down into four parts:
1. The Science
2. The Differences
3. The Impact on Relationships
4. The Beauty of God’s Design

Today we will reference some of the material from the early parts of their
book. Here’s an excerpt that highlights some of the topics covered throughout the
text:
“Our good friend Chris came over to our home one Saturday morning to
share some time together over a cup of coffee. Chris and his wife, Sherri,
had been married for about six months. They had chosen Barb and me to be
their marriage mentors, so we had met with them during their engagement
and continued to do so after the wedding. After discussing our observations
of the Denver Broncos’ football season, Chris and I began talking about
marriage.
“Walt,” he began, “when Sherri and I met with you and Barb before we
were married, you taught us about some of the differences between men and
women and our brains. I accepted what you said but didn’t realize exactly
how big a deal it really is.”
“In what ways?” I asked.
“I don’t even know where to begin. There are so many ways we are
different. When it comes to sex, Sherri likes thirty minutes of slow foreplay.
For me, turning off our bedroom light is foreplay. I like watching football
 and The Unit, and she likes watching Dancing with the Stars and anything
on HGTV.”
While he took a sip of coffee, I remained quiet, knowing more was coming.
“When I write a note to Sherri, it has the essentials—what she needs to
know. When Sherri writes me a note, she uses scented, colored stationery
and dots her i’s with little hearts. Even if she disses me in a note, she puts a
dorky little smiley face at the end. I hate that! What’s worse, she wants me to
write notes the same way.”
He appeared to be deep in thought and then continued.
“Here’s another thing that bugs me. When I say I’m ready to leave the
house, it means I’m ready to leave at that moment. When Sherri says she is
ready to go, it means she will be ready sometime in the next hour — after
she finishes her hair and makeup and changing her outfit two or three times.
“And don’t get me started on the bathroom,” Chris added. “I have, at most,
six items in the bathroom—shaving cream, a razor, a toothbrush, toothpaste,
a bar of soap, and deodorant. But Sherri must have sixty items! I don’t even
know what fifty of them are for.
“And, Walt, isn’t a cell phone a communications tool? I use mine to
communicate information in short calls and brief text messages or to get an
answer. Sherri uses her cell phone to visit with a girlfriend for two hours
after they’ve had lunch that same day!”
He finally stopped, and I was able to get a word in. “So, Chris, what does
all this mean to you?”
He thoughtfully sipped his coffee and then nodded. “You were right when
you told me that men and women are so different. Now I’ve got to figure out
what to do about it.”
The scriptures have long maintained that men and women were both made in
God’s image, but that there are unique differences and roles that must be recog-
nized and acknowledged in order to maintain the love and respect that both genders
crave.
There is a mountain of brain research from the last two decades that explains
how dramatic the differences between male and female brains are in anatomical,
chemical, hormonal and physiological ways.
 These differences affect the emotions, thinking and behavior of children as
well as adults. As believers, the Larimores are convinced that every one of these
brain differences is "divinely designed" by the Creator, and not simply a result of
nurture, as many secular experts believe. With this basic presupposition, as
described in the Psalm 139, the authors offer both sexes positive and encouraging
confidence that although men and women are very different, that they are of equal
value, and that God created them to complement one another.

The book describes male and female brain anatomy in simple layperson's
language and describes how brain chemistry affects the way men and women react
to and respond uniquely to their world through their various senses of sight, smell,
hearing, touch and taste.
 There are also differences in systemizing and empathizing,
 differences in spatial skills,
 different responses to stress,
 different emotional responses,
 differences in multitasking (they are better at it than we are),
 and differences in intuition
which all serve to better educate one sex about the other, thus providing
increased opportunity for deeper understanding and mutual respect.

For example, men express their care for their wives and loved ones by a
"vocabulary of action" it is shown by doing things, sharing activities, expressing
feelings through inarticulate gifts, favors and physical courtesies.
Women express their feelings of love best through the language of
relationship with others and often speak via indirect talk that confuses and
frustrates men, but by which their female counterpart friends intuitively
understand. (Doesn’t it drive you crazy when they do that?!)
The authors don’t just describe these differences, they also make some good
suggestions for dealing with them. One helpful tip they offer is that when women
want to talk something over with a man, they shouldn’t hint about it. It doesn’t
matter if it is a subtle hint or a strong and obvious hint. Men either won’t get it or
they simply don’t respond well to it. Instead ladies need to give their men a
suggested time, a convenient place and a brief, but clear plan when requesting time
to talk. This appeals to the man's more systematic mind which tends to
compartmentalize and deal with one thing at a time. (We’ll give an example later)
 Now, why are we like this?

1) Genetics
Research shows that “sex chromosome genes contribute directly to the
development of a gender difference in the brain.”
Researchers have found at least fifty‐four genes that are produced in
different amounts in male and female mouse brains prior to any male
hormonal influence.
Eighteen of these genes were found at higher levels in the male brains,
while thirty-six were found at higher levels in the female brains.
2) Testosterone Wash
The corpus callosum is the largest structure connecting the right and left
sides of brain. This pipeline of more than 300 million fibers functions like a
powerful and fast, monster cable that enables both sides of the brain to
communicate with each other and process for each other. Women have
tremendously more of this than men.
While a male child is in the womb, a gush of testosterone actually causes
sections of the corpus callosum to decrease in size by dissolving portions of
the connection or by decreasing the growth of the nerves. That’s why men
tend to process primarily with the left or right side of their brains, while
women are able to mix it up more. It has been said that men are like waffles
and women are like spaghetti in this way.
3) Estrogen Wash
In unborn females, the opposite happens. Exposure to the female hormone,
estrogen, actually prompts the nerve cells to grow more connections
between the left and right brain. So not only is a girl’s corpus callosum
larger than a boy’s before birth, it continues to be larger in childhood and
adulthood.
So what does this mean? Male brains contain about 6.5 times more gray
matter - the “thinking matter” while female brains have more than 9.5
times as much white matter - the “processing matter.”
Not only do women have a relatively larger connection between the
hemispheres, but theirs is composed almost completely of white matter.
 Dr. Raquel Gur says, “The implication of women having more white
matter connecting between the hemispheres of the brain is that they
would have better communication between the different modes of
perceiving and relating to the world, on the other hand, men,” who
have a relatively smaller corpus callosum that is made up of less white
matter, “would demonstrate a stronger concentration on working
within any one of those modes.”
Different Brain Types and Processing
The systematizing and empathizing brain types manifest themselves in a variety of
ways. Here are a few examples:
• in the toys kids prefer (girls like human-type dolls, boys like mechanical
trucks)
– (*Tell story of feminist who wanted to raise her daughter with
gender-neutral influences and found her playing outside with trucks)
• in response to verbal impatience (males tend to order others more,
females tend to negotiate with others more) I too know exceptions to this,
but this is a tendency surfaced by recent research.
• in navigating (women personalize space by finding landmarks, men see a
geometric system and take directional cues in the layout of routes)
• in play (boys compete, girls cooperate)
*Of course, these are generalizations, but they are biologically based.
How did they discover these differences? Drs. Ruben and Raquel Gur show
with fMRI that women’s brains light up in more areas and use more brain
pathways than men’s brains when given a variety of tasks. Because a woman’s
brain is so highly interconnected when compared to a man’s more compart-
mentalized brain, women are better designed to multitask. (Waffles vs. spaghetti)
Not only is a woman’s brain designed to multitask, it virtually never turns off.
Her Brain:
You’re on your computer, moving between six or seven open screens on
your desktop. Perhaps you’re juggling three or four Word documents, an Excel
spreadsheet or two, and your home budgeting program. It’s a digital Grand Central
Station.
 Now add another dimension: Imagine that some of the open files and
programs are actually weeks old and have been running in the background the
whole time. Even worse, your computer is infected with advertisements that pop
up. You’ve tried to close these unwanted files and pop‐ups many times. You’ve
installed anti‐spyware programs and rebooted your computer, but those pesky
things just keep coming back.
Welcome to a woman’s mental and emotional world!
But when men are called on to process their emotions, studies show that men
can take up to seven hours longer, on average, than women to process emotional
stimuli, thoughts, and feelings. And besides that, most of the time, women need to
talk in order to process, but men generally need to go off into their cave and
secure some time, space, and quiet, hoping to emerge with perspective and maybe
some answers. Then, to top it off, after he’s done that, he still has difficulty
expressing his feelings in words.
Different Abilities to see, smell, and listen
“Women can see colors and textures that men cannot see. They hear things men
cannot hear, and they smell things men cannot smell.” Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.
For example, with repeated exposure to a variety of smells, women quickly
get better and better at detecting particular odors. This increased sensitivity was
five times greater for these women than for the men who were tested. The guys just
couldn’t detect the odors, even with practice. In other experiments, women did
better than men at spotting a target odor against a background of other aromas, a
setting more like real‐life experiences.
And when it comes to listening, brain‐imaging shows that men listen with
only one side of their brain but women use both. Women can listen to,
comprehend, and process as many as seven separate auditory inputs (such as
conversations) at the same time, whereas men can barely follow one. One reason
for this is a woman’s larger corpus callosum that connects her brain’s left and right
hemispheres and enables her to use several highly connected hearing centers in
both sides of her brain simultaneously.
Differences in Reading People
Her brain is also more sensitive to reading facial expressions and better at
decoding nonverbal communication.
 Baby girls, for example, prefer to gurgle at people, but boys are just as
content to gurgle at toys or mobiles. Two‐to‐four‐day‐old girls spend almost twice
as long as boys in maintaining eye contact with an adult, whether the adult was
silent or talking.
Further, baby girls observe and follow the eyes of an adult more often than
baby boys and make more eye contact than boys. No wonder some researchers
now believe that what we’ve called “woman’s intuition” may just be her natural
ability to notice small details and changes in the appearance or behavior of others.
One author observes, “It is obvious to a woman when another woman is
upset or feeling hurt, while a man generally has to physically witness tears or a
temper tantrum or be slapped on the face before he even has a clue that anything is
going on.”
Different Language
When it comes to talking, women are naturally good at it, they enjoy it, and
they do a lot of it. In addition, their emotions are connected to the verbal centers of
their brains. The neural connections between a woman’s emotional processing and
memory centers are larger, far more active, and more strongly connected to the
verbal centers of the brain than in men.
With a smaller hippocampus, men remember fewer emotional experiences
than women. She is designed to connect memories, words, and feelings, so her
conversation tends to be laden with emotion and meaning, thus they feel like they
remember things better than we do. The biologic design of men causes them to be
less likely to identify and communicate their emotions, so they tend to recall the
facts and events, with less association to what they felt at the time.
Furthermore, the portions of his brain that process emotion are much smaller
and much less connected than those in her brain. So, though a man can feel things
quite deeply, a man’s capacity to feel emotions is physically separated from his
ability to verbally express them.
In conversation, men are much less likely (or even able) to talk about
emotions and generally express much less emotional content than the average
woman. This is why male conversations are usually filled with facts and are devoid
of most emotions. Dr. Anne Moir, Ph.D. says,
“The reluctance men have with feeling and with communicating emotions
has a biological root. Their capacity to feel is, to a greater degree than in
women, physically divorced from their capacity to articulate;
 further, the emotional centres of the male brain are located far more
discretely than in the woman.”
So, knowing these differences, what is a woman to do with men like us?
The author’s wife has learned that it can be pretty easy. Here’s what she suggests:
• Make an appointment. At breakfast she might say, “Honey, tonight after
dinner, can we talk about our vacation plans?” (Clear and specific. Not
just, “Can we talk tonight when you get home?” A request like that will
generally be the seeds of a panic attack for most men.)
• Give him an agenda. She might say, “I want to talk with you about the
best time to schedule the repair work on the car.”
• Let him know there’s a time limit. “Would you consider taking a
ten‐minute break at half time to chat?”
Also . . .
• Let him know whether she wants a solution to the topic of our
discussion or whether she just wants him to listen.
• Make sure he has to listen to only one audio input at a time (no
children talking, TV blaring, or radio playing). She then goes on to say,
• “I don’t interrupt when he’s speaking.”
•” I do not expect him to be my girlfriend.”

So when a man is dealing with a project, a problem, a stress, or an emotion,

a man will typically become very quiet. While a man is using his right brain to
solve problems or deal with emotions, it is hard for him to use his left brain to
listen or speak. And remember, we tend to use only one side at a time.
Our compartmentalized brain is designed to do one thing at a time; it is
difficult for us to solve a problem and converse at the same time. Scans show that
when a man is sitting silently, his brain is either at rest or he’s “having a
conversation with himself.”
Most women find this incomprehensible, and even frightening, if they don’t
understand that this is how a male’s brain is designed to work. It’s almost the
opposite of her brain. A woman’s brain is never at rest, (and that’s why when
we’re around them, we’re never at rest) and when she is dealing with a problem,
she not only wants to talk, she needs to talk. (And because of that, we need to
listen.)
Her conversation with another person allows her to reduce stress by talking
through the problem. It’s important for men to realize that when she does this,
she’s not necessarily looking for a solution in the same way they would.
 We have all heard this, but it is still hard for us to listen to so many
problems, concerns, and questions without offering some answers. And there are
times when they totally confuse us by actually wanting some answers or solutions.
We need to help our wives understand that we need to be told when they want us to
just listen and when they want us to help in some other way.
It’s perfectly natural for women to want to talk about their feelings and
emotions. It’s also perfectly natural for men to avoid extended conversations as
much as possible—particularly if they are emotionally focused.
In the remaining parts of the book, you will appreciate the Larimores’ fine
study of the sexual differences and needs between men and women in relation to
their brain uniqueness and how respect (for men) and love (for women) play a
major role in their sexual fulfillment. From the outset, you will find great value and
encouragement here. This is a fresh approach on the current topic of brain
differences, and it comprehensively includes our Lord and His divine design into
their conclusions. Hopefully this information will help us as we meditate passages
such as:
I Pt. 3: 1-2, 7 –
“Wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of
them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word (not so
much talking) by the behavior of their wives, (what we tend to notice more)
as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. (As in the Love &
Respect material, this is what we tend to value and respond to most.)
“You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an
understanding way, (Even when we don’t understand them. This is the
kind of gentle, tender response that helps them feel loved) as with someone
weaker (physically), since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow
heir of the grace of life, (This doesn’t allow for superior attitudes or any
condescension. Then Peter gives us a sobering warning) so that your
prayers will not be hindered.”
Let’s pray to that end.