LITTLE ROCK — Flashback to last week.
We dedicated a whole column to a study claiming men talk more (not to mention faster) than women. Well, at least on the phone to service providers (like gardeners and auto body shops). This according to an official scientific source. Well, it was Marchex, a mobile advertising company. Still, we found it fascinating.
“On average, male callers stayed on the phone for 7 minutes, 23 seconds, and women for just 6 minutes, 30 seconds,” according to the study.
Their conclusion: Males have more to say.
Not so. Unless we’re talking about infantile rodents. (Shame on you for saying, “Same thing!”)
A study about sex and language from the University of Maryland School of Medicine was published online last week by The Journal of Neuroscience, which sounds slightly more authoritative than a mobile advertising company. In the Neuroscience study, led by J. Michael Powers and Margaret McCarthy, researchers analyzed the presence of Foxp2, a “language protein” in the brain.
“This study is one of the first to report a sex difference in the expression of a language-associated protein in humans or animals,” McCarthy was quoted as saying. “The findings raise the possibility that sex differences in brain and behavior are more pervasive and established earlier than previously appreciated.”
They conducted tests with rat pups, noting the males - who cried out twice as often when separated from their mothers- were more vocal than females. The little dudes also got more attention when reunited with the “dam” - or female parent - for making all that “dam” racket.
Trials revealed the young male rat brains contained as much as twice as much Foxp2 protein as the females. (Until levels of Foxp2 protein were artificially increased in females and reduced in males; gals got noisy and guys got as quiet as, well, a mouse.)
The opposite is true with humans, based on samples from 10 boys and girls between ages 3 and 5. (Wait, only 10? That’s all you got, Neuroscience? Even that other survey by the mobile advertising company analyzed some 200,000 calls!)
In humans, females have more Foxp2 - about 30 percent more - than males. Which might ex-plain why previous studies revealed girls’ language skills and vocabulary develop earlier and faster than boys’.
We women are naturally wired to converse, blab, yak, blather, chatter, babble, prattle, jabber and meddle and gossip! Oh, I’m yammering? Don’t blame me, blame science!
“Based on our observations, we postulate higher levels of Foxp2 in girls and higher levels of Foxp2 in male rats is an indication that Foxp2 protein levels are associated with the more communicative sex,” McCarthy was quoted as saying.
Suffice it to say, females are just Fox-y.
It would seem this research proves a few other things.
Women have more in their brains.
And men might not be rats after all.
E-mail: [email protected] What’s in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman ’hood.
Style, Pages 29 on 02/26/2013