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The Female Brain |  | Author: Louann Brizendine
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  149 reviews
Sales Rank: 1811
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
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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| • | ISBN13: 9780767920100 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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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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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 149
 Instructive March 21, 2010
Tyler Forge (Sunnydale, CA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A woman recently told me a dating story in which her date confessed to "studying women". She laughingly observed that his task was fruitless because women are "too mercurial" and that that man's attempt to develop a rule book could only backfire.
Well, "The Female Brain" is by no means a rule book, but it certainly is instructional in the study of women. Note to the guys: studying women is way different from studying a woman. Think of it this way, a tide table will tell you a bit about the flow in a particular estuary, but nothing about the dangerous shoals and safe channels therein. Oh yeah - women have tides within tides too, stay alert.
The book is very readable and fairly quick. It discusses the major phases of a woman's life from fetus to post menopause and what the major hormonal pressures are in each phase. Anyone who reads it will be better prepared for those pressures. Women will have a better clue to the source some of their own moods. Men will better know when to duck.
The chapter on a woman's emotional wiring is particularly enlightening. Women are far more perceptive of emotions than us men are. Furthermore, the experience we've all had where our gal suddenly starts crying for no apparent reason kinda makes sense. In her reality, she's been telling us for days, perhaps weeks, that something is bugging her. In our reality, she was fine and then a bunch of drama came out of no where. If we had as much of our brains dedicated to processing emotions then we'd have seen it coming. Knowing about these differences doesn't mean I'll be more perceptive, but I'll be able to forgive myself for not noticing and perhaps my girl will forgive me a bit quicker.
On the bright side, I learned that warm socks can really help romantically. Read the book. It makes sense.
 Very amusing, not at all academic February 20, 2010
Victoria Tarasova (NYC, NEW YORK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You know an author is out to prove something when she states that she attended Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley within the first page of her book. Furthermore, you know she wants to be taken seriously when she keeps repeating this claim to fame every few pages and also reminds you of all the thousands of cases she has seen while working at her clinic. What you don't know, however, is why someone who claims to be so experienced relies solely on anonymous studies and personal anecdotes about herself, unidentified friends, and nameless patients (besides one biochemistry professor who was a pole dancer in college) as the basis for generalizations for the behavior of ALL women and men.
Brizendine spends the majority of her book discussing such stories. When she tries to support her claims with scientific data, she is very specific; for instance, a Swiss experiment proved that oxytocin acts as a pleasure stimulant for the brain. Who conducted this experiment? When was it conducted? How many subjects were tested? Such information is conveniently left unmentioned throughout the book in order not to trouble readers' minds with cumbersome facts. Well, if that's the case, then an experiment conducted in NY proved that the brain is actually located in a person's neck and not the head. Brizendine did provide over 70 pages of notes and references, but readers are sure to be able to take the time to match anecdote with reference number when the references are alphabetized without any mention to the chapter they support.
Many of the "facts" this books provides are also very questionable. Men think about sex once a minute while women think about it a maximum of three times per day? Do these chaste women turn on the television, ever? And I'm sure every teenage boy thinks about sex two hundred forty times during the four hours that he spends taking the SAT. (And yet, some boys STILL get perfect scores. They must be great prodigies indeed.) As another example, Brizendine states that women speak an average amount of 20000 words per day while men only speak 7000, a fact that Brizendine obtained from a self-help book written in 1997 called "Talk Language: How to Use Conversation for Profit and Pleasure." I'm sure years of meticulous research were made to prove THAT hypothesis.
Overall, on an academic scale of 1-10, I would give this book a 3. The basic premises of the book is that women and girls seek acceptance and are remarkably intuitive due to possessing low testosterone levels, while men are domineering, aloof, and incapable of reading other people's body language when it does not indicate a direct threat to them. On an entertainment scale, however, I would give it an 8. I had such a great time watching Brizendine try to get me to take her seriously and every few pages evoked quite a few laughs. Some great quotes presented in this literary masterpiece:
"Girls who expect their boyfriends to chat with them the way their girlfriends do are in for a big surprise. Phone conversations can have painful lulls. The best she can often hope for is that he is an attentive listener. She may not realize he's just bored and wants to get back to his video game."
"Testosterone has been shown to decrease talking as interest in socializing---except when it involves sports or sexual pursuit."
"Their [adolescent boys'] reluctance to talk to their parents comes out of magical thinking that grown-ups will read between their spoken lines and the look in their eyes and know that the subject of sex has taken them over, mind, body, and soul."
"Activities such as caressing, kissing, hugging, gazing, and orgasm can replenish the chemical bond of love in the brain."
Great book--EVERYONE SHOULD READ IT! February 3, 2010
Kimberly Ann (Seattle)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is fascinating. It makes so much sense. It validates what I have felt for years! Women and men are different even in how we think even throughout our lives and even month to month.
the book was recommended by my friend, haven't read the book yet December 23, 2009
trykorovy (Richmond, VA)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
haven't read the book yet. I bought it because my friend really liked it and recommended it to me. She always tells me different stories and facts that she learned from this book, so I hope I will find time to read it soon.
 "The Female Brain", I think you meant "The Female Hormones" December 7, 2009
Nikunj Konduru
I am writing this review to notify those who are contemplating reading this book that only read it if you want to read for fun and entertainment, not for pure knowledge. I purchased and read this book for two reason: 1) I was curious about the neuronal changes between men and women that affects the way they think and act, and (2) because one of my classmates in Introductory Neuroscience class recommended it as an essential look inside the female brain. As I read the book however, I was extremely disappointed in the amount of neuroscience that is actually present in the book and the bias in which the information is presented. Although I found the book to be an easy read with witty anecdotes and minimal use of complicated jargon, I found it to be over simplified to quench my curiosity about the neuroscience behind the clear difference between genders.
Style and Structure:
The book is divided into seven chapters discussing the different stages of a female's life, and topics like sex, love and trust, and emotions in terms of females. The book starts with an introduction section that pretty much covers most of the neuroscience present in the book. In the rest of the chapters, the author uses stories of her patients in the Women's and Teen Girl's Mood and Hormone Clinic, which she founded at University of California, San Francisco, to provide real life examples of emotions and actions of women during various stage of life. In addition, she provides extensive notes and references section for further readings.
Synopsis:
Introduction
Before even starting the book, the author provides a page of neuro-anatomy that is important in causing gender differences though their size and level of activation. This gives a very brief description of the part and how it is different in men and women. The brain parts that are discussed are the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), Prefrontal Cortex (PFC), Insula, Hypothalamus, Amygdala, Pituitary Gland, and Hippocampus. Next, the author provides a list of hormones that affect the female brain. This section discusses the hormones in a very non-scientific way by describing what emotions these hormones invoke in women. And the last section describes the various phases of a female life, and hormone changes, female specific brain changes, and the reality changes that occur during these phases. Sadly, this section pretty much covers all of the neuroscience that is present in the book.
The Birth of the Female Brain
In this chapter we learn that female is the default brain setup in all fetuses until the eight week of development. During this time, the male fetuses experience a surge of testosterone, which decreases the cell growth in communication center of the brain and increases them in the aggression areas. In addition, she states that "girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys" which means that their mental characteristics are already determined before birth. The author states that these initial changes in the brains cause differences in genders regarding reading emotions, differentiating tone changes in voices, showing empathy towards others, avoiding conflicts, and communicating feelings.
Teen Girl Brain
In this section, the author discusses how the brain changes during puberty and why there is so much drama in a teen girl's life. For example, the author discusses how the estrogen and progesterone waves have a great impact on the emotions and actions of a teenage girl. In addition, the author discusses how hormones in teen girls have increased memory and increased desire to communicate their feelings while the teen boys start becoming recluse.
Love and Trust
In this section, we learn topics such as female mindset on mating and how it has been influenced by the evolution, chemical attraction between genders, how women calculate potential danger, and how love influences and changes neural circuitry. When discussing love, the author writes "it shares brain circuitry with states of obsession, mania, intoxication, thirst, and hunger." In addition, we learn that dopamine and oxytocin play an extremely important role in bond forming in females.
Sex: The Brain below the Belt
This section discusses the various aspects of a female orgasm. She says that "female sexual turn-on begins, ironically, with a brain turn-off." This means that any activation in the amygdala disrupts the female orgasm. In addition, she discusses the evolutionary significance of a female orgasm. This chapter ends with a discussion of what sex means to men vs. what it means to a women.
The Mommy Brain
This chapter discusses the influence of hormones during the pregnancy and birth of the baby. This chapter mainly focus on the depth of the connection between a mother and a baby. The hormone that are significant during the delivery of the baby is oxytocin. When a woman's water breaks, the progesterone levels in the body collapse, and the oxytocin throughout the body greatly increases. Not only do mothers have increases protective instinct, they also have "better special memory," and "they may be more flexible, adaptive, and courageous." More surprisingly, even if it is not your baby, a person who is around a child a lot will have more oxytocin release than those that are no around children. This chapter also discusses breast feeding and the daddy brain.
Emotion: The Feeling Brain
This chapter discusses the biology of the gut feeling, and how woman are more easily aroused by emotional feeling than men. We learn that it is much easier to activate a woman's amygdala than a male's. Because increased memory is associated with the emotional arousal during the formation of the memory, women tend to have much better memory than men. This chapter also discusses the concept of "mirroring" in women that helps them understand others' emotions better.
The Mature Female Brain
This chapter's main focus is the brain's and body's response to the decline in hormones during menopause for women. It discusses how a woman's mood, personality, and thoughts change during this time, and how the drop in the levels of estrogen and oxytocin in the body affect this. This section also discusses the decrease in the testosterone in females during this time, which decreases the sex drive for women as well. She suggests that hormonal supplements can help a woman get through these years of her life.
Critique:
Initially, I would like to point out the positive aspect of the book. The book was entertaining in its description of how different stages in a woman's life are affected by the hormones. On the other hand, I felt that the book had several short coming that affect my confidence in recommending this book. For example, the way in which the author presented the scientific information in the book. If the author was confident that her claims about the female brain were accurate, she would have provided references where she made claims about various facts. Instead, she writes the book without any references in the text, and provides a 57-page list of references with no explanation of how these references assisted her in her conclusions. If she had provided citations throughout her book of published literature or other scientific sources, it would have greatly increased the credibility of the book.
In addition, the book's major focus is how the levels of hormones in the female have a great impact on a female's emotions, impulses, values, and their perception of reality. In that case, why is the book titled the "Female Brain" when her entire focus is the effect of hormones on a female? This misnomer also decreases my regard for the book as well.
As a person who believes in gender equality regardless of physical changes, it is extremely disappointing at how the author try to emphasize on the factors that make women better than men. She repeatedly compares various aspects of men and women, and she repeatedly presents a conclusion that women are better than men. As an author of a book that is trying to provide scientific information, the author needs to provide information in a objective way such that the reader can form his/her own opinion. In this case however, the author imposes her opinion that women are better than men throughout the book.
I recommend this book to only those who are reading for entertainment more than knowledge. If you are reading for entertainment, however, it is an enjoyable book because the author writes the book in a very novel like fashion. If you are critical reader trying to gather scientific knowledge about the female brain, I would suggest you look elsewhere.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 149
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