Introduction Women have a unique feminine brain. It is different from a man's brain. And it has its own styles of thought. Yet for the last fifty years women have had to fit their brains into a "male" world. We have had to learn how to, as the song says, "walk like a man," and "talk like a man," but stay a woman inside. To accommodate these two divergent roles, our brains have had to rewire themselves. It's a biological fact that the process of learning any new skill creates physical, structural changes in the brain. Much research has demonstrated learning-induced changes in the brain.

A recent study showed that even learning to juggle objects caused physical changes in brain anatomy. When a woman learns to juggle the traditional feminine role with newer, once typically male responsibilities, her brain changes physically and functionally. And as our world has gotten more technologically complex, the task of assuming roles common to both sexes has taken its toll on women's emotional and physical health. So just being a woman today gives you some inborn mental and emotional challenges. However, the unique wiring of your brain and body also gives you some unique gifts and abilities. In this book, I'll tell you how, as a woman, you can keep your brain tuned in to your natural mood cycles and thought patterns, but also be able to tune in to the new challenges that you face as you go to work in the boardroom, the home, the hospital, or the office -- without compromising your health. I can help you do this because I have done it myself. The New Feminine Brain After four years of medical school and three years of a Ph.

D. program in neuroanatomy and behavioral neuroscience, I knew how traditional science viewed the female brain. I had studied it and compared it to the male brain. I had researched how emotions are wired in the brain; how memory and attention are wired; how morality, movement, desire, and passion are wired; and how the brain and body are interconnected. But fourteen years ago, when I walked onto the medical floor at Boston City Hospital as a medical student doing a clerkship, I looked around at the other doctors and realized that a lot of women working there didn't have the traditional feminine brain I'd learned about. Sure, there were the empathetic, motherly types who went into pediatrics or family practice and in their spare time ran recycling drives and worked for the homeless. But one woman we all had pegged for pediatrics shocked us by going into surgery -- the most macho of all medical specialties. In short, my understanding of how a woman's brain is wired was turned on its head.

And what I had learned in seven years of training didn't amount to a row of pins when it came to making clinical decisions about my patients. At no time was this more obvious than my first day in the hospital, when I was sent to the emergency room to examine my first patient. I looked the part of a traditional doctor in my brand-new white 100-percent-cotton doctor's jacket, carrying my brand-new black doctor's bag. But it soon became apparent that despite two advanced degrees and $275,000 in tuition (and student loans), the traditional -- read, masculine -- approach to medicine wasn't going to work for me. All I was told about the patient was her name and age. But as soon as I heard her name, information about her started coming to me intuitively. I could see in my mind's eye where her body was affected, and at the same time, I could sense her emotional state and how that might have predisposed her to illness. With these clues, I quickly checked the reference books in the on-call room for background in illnesses and conditions associated with her symptoms and made a note of tests I might need to do to make a diagnosis.

It was the intuitive information, combined with all the knowledge packed in the traditional doctor's.