Study Shows Possible Cause for Aggressive Behavior in Men
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: New scientific findings say men really are more aggressive than women. Scientists say that's because women's brains are just better wired for keeping a lid on anger. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here trying to stay very calm and collected and cool in Atlanta this morning. You have no temper.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely not. I'm like those New York cabbie drivers. First time I got in trouble with you, Paula.</s>ZAHN: Stop it, stop it, stop it.</s>GUPTA: Listen, this is actually, really, a very interesting story and kind of breaking news, right, this just in. Men and women are different. That's no big surprise. We've known for quite some time. It's come to be accepted that women excel at certain things, and men excel at other things. Women, for example, language, memory, things like that. Men have spatial relationships, women are better at assessing and processing emotions and men tend to be more aggressive. These are commonly accepted, 81.1 percent of all violent crimes committed in the United States committed by men. So, is it how men are taught? Is it because men are bigger and stronger, are or is it something more than that? Well, the researchers at the University of Pennsylvania actually decided to look one step further, and this is really pretty cool stuff. They looked at 57 women, 59 men, and they really tried to look at something called a functional MRI scan. A functional MRI scan basically is an MRI scan basically looking at what the brain is doing during specific emotions or specific disease processes. And they tried to find out -- let's take a look at some of those functional MRI scans, different areas of the brain actually light up during different times. I don't know if we have a picture there, but let me show you specifically what they found, Paula, and I have my brain model here, so let me go to that here for a second. The brain model basically showed that orbital frontal area, which is this part of the brain right here, is actually a little bit more developed in women versus men. Now, this area of the brain is responsible for that part of the brain to assess and process emotions. So once an emotion is felt, it actually comes through here and before it actually leaves the body, actually is displayed, it has to get sort of regulated in this area of the brain. What they found is that on average, women had larger orbital frontal areas. They akin that to basically saying they are more likely to process emotions, assess the emotions, before they express the emotions better than men, and that may be an explanation as to why men in general are more aggressive than women.</s>ZAHN: That doesn't necessarily mean that all men are more aggressive than women, does it?</s>GUPTA: No, absolutely not. In fact, interestingly in that study that they looked at almost 60 men and 60 women, they found that, actually, the woman that had the lowest orbital frontal volume overall was actually a woman, but on average, women have a larger part of that brain than men do.</s>ZAHN: And what role do hormones play in all this?</s>GUPTA: Well, you know, it is really interesting, and I think it sort of begs the question, are you born with it, or is it something that you develop over time? And a lot of people will look at these sort of studies and say, Well, yes, sure, but you know, men and women are taught differently and the brain responds differently. It could also be hormones as well, hormones actually putting some effect on the brain, allowing certain parts of the brain to actually develop more so than other parts of the brain. So could it be that hormones, in addition to regulating several different functions in a woman's body, actually also allows part of the brain to expand that regulates aggression, regulates certain aggressive behaviors? Possibly. We don't know the answer. The only way to really find that out would be to do these functional MRI scans on children as well and see how it changes as they grow into adults. But obviously that would be a more difficult thing to do.</s>ZAHN: It is just interesting to see what we should take from this study. I mean, what do we learn from it, how do you apply it?</s>GUPTA: Well, we've known for a long time the frontal lobe is responsible in large part for aggression to some extent. That's why frontal lobotomies were performed a long time ago that actually remove the frontal lobe and that would supposedly take away a lot of the aggression. It is very difficult to say what we are going to learn from this, particularly are we starting to learn that people have predestined behaviors? They are going to develop into something based on what their brains look like. I'm not so sure that we're there yet, but I will tell you, Paula, these functional MRI scans, actually being able to look at someone's brain during the process of a particular emotion or particular behavior is really fascinating, though the whole extent that certain parts of the brain light up in some people more than others, I think there is a whole avenue of research there that might lead us to be able to actually predict behavior as well as disease processes down the line.</s>ZAHN: And being that you're a neurologist, you may find yourself in a courtroom some day trying to testify about someone complaining about their compromised orbital frontal area.</s>GUPTA: That's very good, Paula. You're absolutely right.</s>ZAHN: Good luck, doctor. With this information, confirming that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Appreciate it. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com