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LONG-SUFFERING couples take heart. There is a good reason for those endless
arguments in the front of the car: men and women use different parts of the
brain when they try to find their way around, suggesting that the strategies
they use might also be completely different.

Matthias Riepe and his colleagues at the University of Ulm in Germany asked
24 healthy volunteers鈥攈alf of them men, half women鈥攖o find their way
out of three virtual-reality mazes displayed on video goggles. Meanwhile, the
researchers monitored the volunteers鈥� brain activity using a functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. This showed that men and women called on
strikingly different brain areas to complete the task. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 expect it to be
so dramatic,鈥� says Riepe.

Previous studies have shown that women rely mainly on landmarks to find their
way. Men use these cues too, but they also use geometric cues, such as the angle
and shape of a wall or a corner. Such studies also suggest that men navigate
their way out of unfamiliar spaces more quickly, as Riepe found in his study,
too.

Riepe discovered that both men and women used parts of the parietal cortex
towards the top of the brain, the right side of the hippocampus and a few other
well-established areas to find their way out. Neuroscientists think that the
parietal regions help translate what the eyes see into information about where
the body is in space, while the hippocampal region helps process how objects are
arranged.

But other regions seemed to be exclusively male or female. The men engaged
the left side of their hippocampus, which the researchers say could help with
assessing geometry or remembering whether they have already visited a location.
The women, by contrast, recruited their right frontal cortex. Riepe says this
may indicate that they were using their 鈥渨orking memory鈥�, trying to keep in mind
the landmarks they had passed.

鈥淚t fits very well with the animal studies,鈥� says Riepe. He points out that
there seem to be similar differences in rats. For example, damage to the frontal
lobe will impair a female鈥檚 sense of direction, but not a male鈥檚.

Riepe is reluctant to speculate about why the sexes are different. 鈥淚 don鈥檛
think it has much to do with experience or how you鈥檙e raised. Male and female
rats aren鈥檛 raised differently.鈥� It may, he suggests, be hard-wired into our
brains.

Neil Burgess, a neuroscientist at University College London, agrees that
there may be underlying structural differences between men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 brains.
鈥淭he gender differences are interesting,鈥� he says. But he also wonders whether
men, having a tendency to play more video games, reacted differently simply
because they were more comfortable with the experimental set-up.