U. study suggests women can roar longer than men

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And they will be able to talk about the scorning far longer than men will, a recent University study suggests. According to a report by University researchers published Monday, outer brain tissue in men deteriorates two to three times faster as they age than brain tissue in women. The study indicates that elderly men experience more tissue atrophy in the left hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for language skills, than in the right hemisphere, which controls spatial and visual perception. Women, however, experience equal deterioration in both hemispheres as they age. The study, which was conducted by the Brain Behavior Lab on 34 men and 35 women ages 18 to 77, found that outer brain tissue atrophies faster in men than in women as they age. Research is continuing on the implications of this discovery, but one of the study's authors said yesterday that it may mean that men lose their verbal skills faster than women. Assistant Psychiatry Professor Susan Resnick said the researchers in the lab, which works to find connections between biological structures and their physiological results, will continue to research the topic. Resnick said this is "the first step" in determining how behavior might be affected and what measures might be taken to protect older people from brain tissue atrophy. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Resnick said the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to determine the amount of fluid and tissue in each participant. The length and width of a groove is an index of how much atrophy has occurred. These findings were compared for differences between subjects of different ages and between men and women. She said that these gender differences are only found on the surface of the brain, adding that brain tissue atrophy deeper in the brain is the same regardless of sex. "Women are less vulnerable to age-related changes in mental abilities, whereas men are particularly susceptible to aging effects on the left hemispheric functions," the report said. The differences may indicate that female sex hormones somehow protect the outer brain from the effects of aging, researchers said.

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