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The Female Brain |  | Author: Louann Brizendine
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $4.85
as of 11/21/2009 07:41 CST details
You Save: $10.10 (68%)
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Seller: more-than-words
Rating:  143 reviews
Sales Rank: 3662
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0767920104
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.8
EAN: 9780767920100
ASIN: 0767920104
Publication Date: August 7, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages.
Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they love. While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the overwhelming need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brain function.
In The Female Brain, Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior.
The result: women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean, communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 143
Women in Leadership and Social Connections November 16, 2009
Karen Buckley (Mill Valley, CA USA)
Social connection is at the core of a woman's brain and her priority according to Louann Brizendine in her book The Female Brain. I can't disagree. The hundreds of women I've worked with as a thinking partner and Executive Coach as well as those who enjoy our Wisdom Connection programs all find joy, solace, strength, and momentum for taking action on whatever matters the most to them through their social connections. As Dr. Brizendine points out, this tendency is vital for good mothering and community building.
Given that companies today are often frustrated in accomplishing their goals by the interface points, the places where they need effective collaboration outside the company structure, this predilection in a woman leader toward connection can be an advantage to planning a new initiative. It can also slow us down as women in accomplishing our own goals because we don't want to stand out from the crowd.
What I like about this book is that Dr. Brizendine paints a picture of the way our brain differs from a man's brain. It's not a box that we are stuck in but rather a starting point that can give us a real advantage - as long as we get to know and appreciate and strategically apply our female approaches. Linking our innate and beautiful wisdom with our leadership means a bigger sphere of influence and greater impact. Just what the world needs at this time.
 Book September 27, 2009
K. Marx (Rochester)
I ordered a book from this buyer and it came super fast i was suprised! Greatt condition too
An Essential Look Inside the Female Brain September 26, 2009
Courtnay Byars
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a female interested in biological forces, this book offered tremendous insight into why I act and think the way I do. The Female Brain explains the female brain in an informative but witty way. In this review, I intend to educate readers on the details of the book to try to encourage everyone to read it. I believe this book will better prepare females for certain events in their lives, and possibly make life a little easier consequently. Dr. Brizendine writes in a humorous and fun fashion that keeps you entertained while learning. She also writes in a language in which the average reader can understand, even without any knowledge of the brain or biology in general.
Style/Structure
The book is broken into seven chapters representing different stages of female development as well as chapters on sex, love and trust, and emotion. The book starts with an introduction describing the history of the study of female brains and Dr. Brizandine's interest in it. The book emphasizes the large role hormones have on the female brain in regulation of emotions and how a female acts. She even includes a chart of the various hormonal changes in each stage of female life and the consequences these hormones have on the female. Each chapter is subsequently broken into different subsections, stressing important points of each topic. She uses stories of various patients of hers to elucidate women's actions and feelings during specific stages of life throughout the book. The book concludes with research on hormone therapy and the author's stance and experience with it.
Synopsis
In the first chapter titled "The Birth of the Female Brain", the author states that the brain of a fetus is the same in each gender until the eighth week of development in which if the fetus is a male, "a huge testosterone surge" kills cells in communication centers of the brain and increases cell growth in the aggression centers. According to the author, this causes one of the primary differences between male and female brains, leading to girls showing more empathy and cooperation with peers. Girls can even "hear a broader range of emotional tones in the human voice than can boys."
"Teen Girl Brain" relates initiation of the cycling of the hormones estrogen and progesterone to the actions of females during these tough years. She explains how the levels of hormones at various stages of the cycle lead from stress at one point to irritability at another. Also, the author explains how the hormones increase memory, the desire to talk, and sexual urges at various point during the cycle. The brain becomes sharper due to "a twenty five percent growth of connections in the hippocampus during weeks one and two [of the menstrual cycle]."
The chapter on love and trust focuses on subjects such as chemical attraction, the intricacies of the brain "in love", and evolutionary forces of mating and women's trust in men. The author emphasizes the effects that dopamine and oxytocin have on the brain, including affecting judgment and trust. The affect of hormones are so strong that " the brain circuits that are activated when we are in love match those of the drug addict."
The author also elaborates on different aspects of sex, delving into both research and evolutionary reasons of the female orgasm. This chapter also explores reasons behind female infidelity, suggesting that heightened detection of male pheromones right before ovulation may be a cause.
The chapter titled "The Mommy Brain" highlights the role of hormones on the female brain both during pregnancy and after the birth of the baby. Topics such as the pleasure of breast feeding, returning to work, and even the "daddy brain" are addressed. She mainly emphasizes the intimate connection between mother and child. For example, the mother can detect the smell of her baby with about ninety percent accuracy.
The chapter on emotion focuses on women's heightened emotional sense and how it affects various aspects. Women unconsciously participate in an act called "mirroring" in which involves imitating the facial expression of someone else in order to assess the other's emotions. She addresses the female's better emotional memory as well as her tendency to avoid conflict. Additionally, possible causes behind female's greater anxiety and depression than men are described.
Finally, "The Mature Female Brain" is all about the struggles women go through during their menopausal years. The author stresses the shock a female's body goes through during the withdrawal of hormones that have been affecting her body her entire life. This leads to increased ambition towards working and decreased responsibility in caring for the family. The author suggests hormone therapy as a way to reverse declining function of the brain such as the loss of memory.
Critique
I really enjoyed the author's use of stories of her patients because it kept the book more entertaining while providing situations that linked in well with the topic that she was covering. At first, I was worried that the book would be all facts and statistics but I was pleasantly surprised at how the author incorporated those stories as well as various other theories in biological science. For example, she links certain female tendencies to evolutionary forces such as the "fight or flight" response.
The book surprisingly contained a fair amount of information on the male as well. Most of these references were comparing the two sexes. At some points, I felt a bit of a feminist vibe in the way she talks about men, as most of her references imply ways in which females are better than males. However, I do not think the way in which she does this would offend the average male reader.
As a female, I found the chapter on love and trust to be particularly enthralling. I found the role of oxytocin and dopamine particularly interesting on the foundations of trust and happiness in relationships. One fact that I find very interesting is that hugging and cuddling cause a release of oxytocin in the brain which leads to the female trusting the man. The book provided me with greater insight into why I feel so in love with my boyfriend, no matter how crazy he drives me sometimes! As a biology major, I also enjoyed the connections the author made using ecology and evolution.
In relation to neuroscience, the book taught me more about the various regions of the brain and their various roles. However, the book most extensively covers the role of hormones on the brain. At first, I thought the author was using too much of a hormonal basis for female actions and emotions, but after reading more of the book I was happy to discover her incorporation of other elements such as ecology, genetics, and evolution. I believe she does a wonderful job in tying all of the information together in a logical way without any awkward transitions.
Recommendation
I encourage everyone to read this book as it has definitely become one of my favorites. Dr. Brizendine does a fantastic job at keeping the audience captivated so that you never want to put the book down. The book gave me significant insight into the large hormonal forces that guide female behavior. I think the book is a great read for both males and females so that each sex can have a greater understanding of the female and the biological forces that drive her.
The Female Brain September 7, 2009
Buist
This book is a must for any confused husband who cannot decipher The Femals Brain. The flat earth supposed academics, who don't like anyone in their rose garden without permission, and who claim to know the real deal are wondering why they didn't write this book. As a student of womanhood for 50 years plus, my mother, three sisters, two wives, four preganacies and watching their behavior I was amazed how true these descriptions rang. The book brought back the wild mood swings of teenage sisters and pregnant wives and my bewildered and improper reactions to their behavior.
The proper way to handle these problems is a bigger mystery, given variations in the symptoms and reactions to any remedy, but the fact of the matter is the behaviors and responses of al these stages are tailored to propel DNA into the future. Many eons of evolution are the testimony to the effectiveness of these responses. Women are not simply smaller males, they are finely tuned time machines who are hell bent on getting their genes into the future. Their determination to accomplish this task is massive. Even if the technical data in the book is not completely correct, there is no denying dna propigation is what drives all organisms and keeps their species on the face of the earth.
I would recommend this book especially to those men and women who are planning to marry and have children. Read the book and discuss the issues and implications to marriage, especially child birth. Guys, your wife is not your mom, she is your childrens mom...
 Disappointing... September 1, 2009
E.C. (Boulder, CO United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Other critical reviews have done a good job in rebutting a lot of what is in the book, so I will not go into a lot of detail. But as a male reader, I found much of the book to be biased, unscientific, and nonobjective. The author seems to have written a book to "preach to the choir" -- a book written for women so they can feel good about their way of thinking and their emotions, and feel superior to the poor men with their less advanced brains, apparently good for nothing but sex and aggression, according to the book. I am a scientist, although not in the medical profession, and I found much of the author's reasoning unconvincing, relying mostly on anecdotes, with only rather hand-wavy arguments to draw questionable conclusions from observations.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 143
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