According to the latest researches, the brains of the girls who are anxious are working harder even during the easiest tasks.
Such a research could help find a treatment for anxiety disorders. It could help predict the appearance of the anxiety problems in later life of women.
The research
The researchers are really interested in why more women develop anxiety issues during their life than men.
In fact women are twice as likely to develop problems of this kind compared to the opposite sex.
In order to learn why this happens, Jason Moser and his colleagues measured the electrical activity of the brain with the help of an electrode cap.
They worked with 79 female and 70 male college students. The students had to complete an easy task.
All the volunteers had to do is to find the middle letter in a series of letters.
Sometimes the letters were all the same while in other cases the middle letter was different. After the task the volunteers had to fill out a questionnaire regarding how much they worried.
Results
According to the results of the test, the anxious women were a lot more worried than their relaxed counterparts.
On the other hand, the anxious men didn’t show any excess activity. In case of the easy tasks the worried men and worried women had about the same performance.
However as the tasks got more difficult, worried women had a worse performance suggesting that their worries and anxiety prevented them from thinking correctly. In case of men, their worries didn’t make their brains work overtime.
Explanation
According to the researchers in case of the anxious girls the brain has to work a lot harder to achieve a certain level of performance because of the distracting thoughts that girls have. As a result the brain gets burned out from all that hard work. Because of this they could have difficulties with their schoolwork.
It is already known that the anxious children especially girls find it more difficult to learn certain subjects like math. At the moment the researchers are asking whether the female hormone estrogen has anything to do with the brain’s responses.
It looks like there are more differences between women and men than people initially thought. It is true that men and women don’t think in the same way and that women tend to worry about more things than men. The surprise is that this particular feature of feminine gender may prove to be a health hazard on the long run.
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