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美國馬里蘭州大學神經學家和心理學家聯合進行的一項研究顯示，女性的確比男性話多，其原因是女性大腦中的“語言蛋白”比較多。此前有研究稱，女性一天大概說2萬個單詞，比男性多出1.3萬個。而這項研究是首次從語言蛋白含量角度來解釋男女語言表達方面的差別。研究人員對出生四天的雌雄實驗鼠的觀察發現，雄性實驗鼠在5分鐘內發出的聲音是雌性老鼠的兩倍，而對其腦部檢測結果顯示，雄性實驗鼠腦中跟語言表達相關的Foxp2蛋白含量是雌性老鼠的兩倍。研究人員又對十位年齡在3到5歲的兒童腦部蛋白取樣分析后發現，女孩腦中的Foxp2蛋白比男孩多出30%。馬里蘭州大學醫學院教授麥卡錫表示，研究結果表明Foxp2蛋白是哺乳動物口頭交流性別差異的神經生物因素之一。
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Women do really talk more than men, a study has concluded. |
Women do really talk more than men, a study has concluded.
American researchers found females are the more talkative sex because of a special “language protein” in the brain.
The study, compiled by neuroscientists and psychologist from the University of Maryland, concluded that women talked more because they had more of the Foxp2 protein.
The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that higher levels were found among humans that were women but in rats they were males.
Their findings come after it was previously claimed that ladies speak about 20,000 words a day – more than 13,000 more than men.
"This study is one of the first to report a sex difference in the expression of a language-associated protein in humans or animals,” said Prof Margaret McCarthy, who led the study.
“The findings raise the possibility that sex differences in brain and behaviour are more pervasive and established earlier than previously appreciated.”
In their study, the researchers attempted to determine what might make male rats more vocal than their female friends.
They separated four-day-old rats from their mothers and then counted the number of times they cried out in the “ultrasonic range”, the frequencies higher than humans can hear, over five minutes.
While both sexes emitted hundreds of cries, the males called out twice as often, they found. But when the pups were returned to the same cage as their mother, she fussed over her sons first.
According to tests compiled on the parts of the brain known to be involved in vocal calls showed the male pups to have up to twice as much Foxp2 protein as the females.
The researchers then increased the production in the brains of female pups and reduced it in males.
This led to the female rats crying out more often and their mothers showing more interest to them. In contrast, males became less “talkative”.
The researchers then tested samples from ten children, aged between three and five, which showed that females had up to a 30 per cent more of the Foxp2 protein than males, in a brain area key to language in humans.
“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,” said Prof McCarthy, from the university’s School of Medicine.
"Our results implicate Foxp2 as a component of the neurobiological basis of sex differences in vocal communication in mammals." （Source: Telegraph.co.uk）
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（中國日報網英語點津 Helen ）
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