It’s not as if we all start out with the same brain structure. They are different by nature. Think about this. What if the communication center is bigger in one brain than the other? What if the emotional memory center is bigger in one brain than the other? What if one brain develops a greater ability to read cues in people than another? In this case, you would have a person whose reality dictated that communication, connection, emotional sensitivity, and responsiveness were the primary values. This person would prize these qualities above all others and be baffled by another person with a brain that didn’t grasp the importance of these qualities. In essence, you would have someone with a female brain.
—from Chapter 1, “What Makes Us Women”

Every brain begins as a female brain. It only becomes male eight weeks after conception, when excess testosterone shrinks the communications center, reduces the hearing cortex, and makes the part of the brain that processes sex twice as large.

Louann Brizendine, M.D. is a pioneering neuropsychiatrist who brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they’ll love. Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why

A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000
A woman remembers fights that a man insists never happened
A teen girl is so obsessed with her looks and talking on the phone
Thoughts about sex enter a woman’s brain once every couple of days but enter a man’s brain about once every minute
A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can’t spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm
A woman over 50 is more likely to initiate divorce than a man


Women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.

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