Last week ( 1/26/07), we looked at gender differences in musical preferences. The quality of the sound may be a factor as well. McCown et al (1997) found that males displayed a greater preference for "enhanced bass" in music. Interestingly, Mary Ann Clawson (1999) notes that women are overrepresented as bass players in rock bands. Differences ( Read more... )

The literature on the health effects of marriage status is substantial and of varying levels of reliability. Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton (2001) provide a decent review. Generally, men get more health benefit from marriage than do women, but women in unsatisfactory marriages complain of more health problems than do men (or women in happy marriages ( Read more... )

Psychology Info Online (2003) defines Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as "a pattern of depressive or manic episodes that occurs with the onset of the winter months... [which] abate once the days become longer and warmer in the Spring." "Affective" refers to affect, or mood, and not to the seasons affecting a person. The site also says that SAD ( Read more... )

Wolf et al (2001) tested how the relationship between stress-induced cortisol levels affected healthy adult men and women. While they found that higher cortisol levels correlated with lower memory performance in men, there was no such relationship for women. In an elderly population, Seeman et al's 1997 study which showed a greater relationship ( Read more... )

Although present in both men and women, DHEA levels are higher in men throughout life. DHEA is produced in the adrenal gland, and according to Quackwatch.com (2004) "no one knows exactly what it does in the body." DHEA is easily converted into testosterone and estrogen. A Mayo Clinic study (Nair et al, 2006) published today in the New England ( Read more... )

On the opposite side of the coin from yesterday's post about the effects of estrogen levels, testosterone levels also have distinct effects multiple functions. Interestingly, while Bhasin et al. (2001) found many physical performance changes related to testosterone levels in healthy young men, they did not find changes in sexual function, visual- ( Read more... )

Murphy et al. (1996) used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission topography (PET) to investigate gender differences in how brains age. They found that both metabolism and brain volume are affected differently by age in men and women. Murphy et al concluded that this aging difference may be linked to how men and women recover from ( Read more... )