Ya?l: A listener writers in:

Dear AMOS:

Why does it seem like guys are into video games way more than women? Is there a scientific explanation for this?

D: Great question. And in fact there is some scientific research that tries to explain why video games seem to be a guy thing.

Y: Fumiko Hoeft, a researcher at Stanford, got eleven men and eleven women to play a video game while lying inside an MRI scanner. That's a machine that can take detailed pictures of what's happening inside the body.

D: Now, the game the participants played was simple: it consisted only of clicking balls to keep them from hitting a wall at the center of a computer screen. The players soon learned that the faster they clicked, the more territory they gained. What the MRI scan showed was that the player's brains showed activity in regions associated with reward and addiction.

Y: But men's brains showed a lot more activity. So the idea is that men may be hard wired, in a sense, to get excited about the challenge of gaining and losing territory. In other words, it could be that men are more territorial than women.

D: And if that's true, it would explain why guys are so drawn to video games about war and sports, where the object is to vanquish your opponent and conquer territory.

Y: So there may be some video games that women love more than men. But territoriality may help explain why more violent games seem to be mainly a guy thing.