Most women believe that men simply don't understand them. A lot of men would agree that the mind of a woman is a mystery. But at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, some of the most newsworthy stories tried to unravel the workings of the female brain.

For example, what is going on in the brain of a woman in love? Helen Fisher from Rutgers University found that “women showed more activity in the caudate, septum and posterior parietal cortex, which are linked to reward, emotion and attention.” By contrast, “men showed more activity in visual processing areas, including one associated with sexual arousal.” (BBC Online, 12 November 2003).

STL Today (11 November 2003) described a study from a Dutch team who used functional imaging to look inside the brains of women as they experienced orgasm. According to the authors, “the workings of the female brain during sex have been a mystery and something of a taboo until now.”

The brains of new mothers also came under scrutiny (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 14 November 2003). Tracey Shors, also from Rutgers University, found that “female rats in the postpartum period are less anxious and more resistant to stress than females without babies.”

And finally, what happens during the menopause? As described in the Sofia Morning News (14 November 2003), monkeys eat more and gain weight after ovariectomies, and they also show higher levels of leptin.