BOYS quickly get used to fear but girls stay scared, suggest studies done by
Kathleen Thomas and her colleagues at the Sackler Institute for Developmental
Psychobiology in New York.
Thomas asked six boys and six girls aged between 8 and 15 to look at a series
of faces, some neutral, others looking afraid. MRI scans of the amygdala, a part
of the brain associated with fear, revealed that the boys’ reaction to the
fearful faces diminished over time—but the girls continued to react in the
same way. Studies show that adult men’s brains behave the same way as boys’…
