Men See the Big Picture. Truly

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And whether the beholder is a man or a woman determines how beauty is processed in the brain, a study says. Researchers asked men and women to de­cide which paintings and photographs they found beautiful, while brains scans revealed which parts of their brains were active. Results suggest that while both sexes use parts of the brain associated with spatial awareness, men use an area associated with big-pic­ture thinking, while women also use a region linked to local de­tails.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And whether the beholder is a man or a woman determines how beauty is processed in the brain, a study says. Researchers asked men and women to de­cide which paintings and photographs they found beautiful, while brains scans revealed which parts of their brains were active. Results suggest that while both sexes use parts of the brain associated with spatial awareness, men use an area associated with big-pic­ture thinking, while women also use a region linked to local de­tails. All volunteers showed increased activity in the parietal lobe when gazing at something they found beautiful. But men used only the right lobe, while women used lobes on both left and right sides of the brain. Researchers suggest this is because women are con­textualising information and thinking about details. Men, they say, are focussing on the overall image using a more precise form of mental mapping. For much of history, men were hunters and wom­en gatherers. Their brains may, thus, have developed differently.