Fwd: foxnews: HEALTH: Men Better at Seeing Objects in Distance, Study Finds

Study: Hunter-Gatherer Past Makes Men Better at Seeing in the Distance

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Men's hunter-gatherer past has made them better at seeing objects in the distance, while women see better close up, a British study finds.

The study traced how men's and women's brains evolved differently over thousands of years, Agence France-Press reported.

Researchers asked a group of 48 men and women to use a laser pointer to mark the midpoint of lines on a piece of paper at different distances.

Men were more accurate than women when the paper was placed about 3.3 feet away, while women were more accurate when the target was within arm's reach, about 1.6 feet away.

"Evidence already exists that separate pathways in the brain process visual information from near and far space,'' said psychologist Helen Stancey from Hammersmith and West London College.

"Our results suggest that the near pathway is favored in women and the far pathway is favoured in men,'' she said, in a study published online in the British Journal of Psychology.

Click here to read more on this story from AFP.