In the battle of the sexes, new UBC research suggests that men may be stronger physically but women have much greater muscle endurance than their male counterparts. 
 
 In a new study from UBC's Okanagan campus, researchers in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences have found that women are considerably less exhausted after natural, dynamic muscle exercises than men of similar age and athletic ability. 
 
 "We've known for some time that women are less fatigable than men during isometric muscle tests -- static exercises where joints don't move, such as holding a weight -- but we wanted to find out if that's true during more dynamic and practical everyday movements," says Assistant Professor Brian Dalton. "And the answer is pretty definitive: women can outlast men by a wide margin." 
 
 In his study, done in collaboration with the University of Guelph and University of Oregon, Dalton recruited eight men and nine women that were at a similar level of physical fitness. Participants were asked to flex their foot against a suite of sensors as quickly as they could 200 times. The speed, power and torque of their movements and electrical activity of their muscles was then captured and recorded over time. 
 
 "We chose to measure foot movements because it makes use of calf muscles on the back of the leg, which are essential for practical, everyday tasks like standing and walking," says Dalton. "What we found is that males were faster and more powerful at first but became more fatigued much faster than females." 
 
 While only one isolated muscle group was studied, Dalton says he would expect similar results for other muscles groups and his results are consistent with what has been observed elsewhere. 
 
 "We know from previous research that for events like ultra-trail running, males may complete them faster but females are considerably less tired by the end," he adds. "If ever an ultra-ultra-marathon is developed, women may well dominate in that arena." 
 
 But it's not all about competition. Dalton says his results can also inform more practical applications, such as designing exercise programs or even adapting work environments to minimize work-related fatigue and improve overall productivity. 
 
 "We may, for example, want to lower the load for males, even though they may be stronger at the outset, to more closely match the endurance observed in females," he says. "Both sexes have valuable physical abilities and it only makes sense that we study and develop the tools to afford them the best advantage." 
 
 "There's no battle at all," he jokes. "Maybe more of a balance of the sexes." 
 
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 The study appears in the June 2017 issue of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism and was conducted with financial support from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. 
 
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 Email: nathan.skolski@ubc.ca ||||| It's been well established that men perform better than women when it comes to specific spatial tasks. But how much of that is linked to sex hormones versus cultural conditioning and other factors? 
 
 Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to explore this idea by administering testosterone to women and testing how they performed in wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment. 
 
 Using fMRI, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study. 
 
 But when women got a drop of testosterone under their tongue, several of them were able to orient themselves better in the four cardinal directions. 
 
 "Men's sense of direction was more effective. They quite simply got to their destination faster," says Carl Pintzka, a medical doctor and PhD candidate at NTNU's Department of Neuroscience. 
 
 The directional sense findings are part of his doctoral thesis on how the brain functions differently in men and women. 
 
 Puzzle solving in a 3D maze 
 
 Pintzka used an MRI scanner to see whether there are any differences in brain activity when men and women orient themselves. Using 3D goggles and a joystick, the participants had to orient themselves in a very large virtual maze while functional images of their brains were continuously recorded. 
 
 Eighteen men and 18 women first took an hour to learn the layout of the maze before the scanning session. In the MRI scanner, they were given 30 seconds for each of the 45 navigation tasks. One of the tasks, for example, was to "find the yellow car" from different starting points. 
 
 Women often use a route 
 
 The men solved 50 per cent more of the tasks than the women. 
 
 According to Pintzka, women and men have different navigational strategies. Men use cardinal directions during navigation to a greater degree. 
 
 "If they're going to the Student Society building in Trondheim, for example, men usually go in the general direction where it's located. Women usually orient themselves along a route to get there, for example, 'go past the hairdresser and then up the street and turn right after the store'," he says. 
 
 The study shows that using the cardinal directions is more efficient because it is a more flexible strategy. The destination can be reached faster because the strategy depends less on where you start. 
 
 Women have better local memory 
 
 fMRI images of the brain showed that both men and women use large areas of the brain when they navigate, but some areas were different. The men used the hippocampus more, whereas women used their frontal areas to a greater extent. 
 
 "That's in sync with the fact that the hippocampus is necessary to make use of cardinal directions," says Pintzka. 
 
 He explains the findings in evolutionary terms. 
 
 "In ancient times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Therefore, our brains probably evolved differently. For instance, other researchers have documented that women are better at finding objects locally than men. In simple terms, women are faster at finding things in the house, and men are faster at finding the house," Pintzka says. 
 
 A little testosterone under the tongue 
 
 Step two was to give some women testosterone just before they were going to solve the maze puzzles. 
 
 This was a different group of women than the group that was compared to men. In this step, 42 women were divided into two groups. Twenty-one of them received a drop of placebo, and 21 got a drop of testosterone under the tongue. The study was double-blinded so that neither Pintzka nor the women knew who got what. 
 
 "We hoped that they would be able to solve more tasks, but they didn't. But they had improved knowledge of the layout of the maze. And . And they used the hippocampus to a greater extent, which tends to be used more by men for navigating," says Pintzka. 
 
 Losing one's sense of direction is one of the first symptoms in Alzheimer's disease. 
 
 "Almost all brain-related diseases are different in men and women, either in the number of affected individuals or in severity. Therefore, something is likely protecting or harming people of one sex. Since we know that twice as many women as men are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, there might be something related to sex hormones that is harmful," says Pintzka. 
 
 He hopes that by understanding how men and women use different brain areas and strategies to navigate, researchers will be able to enhance the understanding of the disease's development, and develop coping strategies for those already affected. 
 
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 Reference: Changes in spatial cognition and brain activity after a single dose of testosterone in healthy women. Carl W.S. Pintzka et al. Behavioral Brain Research, Vol. 298, Part B, 1 February 2016, Pages 78-90.
– Guys might be good at carrying heavy furniture but they tire faster than their female counterparts, new research out of the University of British Columbia shows. "We've known for some time that women are less fatigable than men during isometric muscle tests—static exercises where joints don't move, such as holding a weight—but we wanted to find out if that's true during more dynamic and practical everyday movements," says UBC researcher Brian Dalton in a press release. "And the answer is pretty definitive: women can outlast men by a wide margin." Collaborating with the University of Guelph and University of Oregon, the researchers report in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism that a handful of men and women were asked to flex their foot against sensors as fast as they could 200 times. Those sensors captured several metrics, including speed, power, torque, and even electrical activity in their muscles. The men were both faster and more powerful, but they also became more fatigued "much faster" than the women. Dalton notes that in ultra-trail running, men tend to be faster, but women tend to be far less tired; in fact in Outside, one runner calls for separate goals for women. "If ever an ultra-ultra-marathon is developed, women may likely dominate," Dalton says. But as for the Mars-vs.-Venus battle, Dalton jokes, "there's no battle at all. Maybe more of a balance of the sexes." More seriously: "Both sexes have valuable physical abilities and it only makes sense that we study and develop the tools to afford them the best advantage." (Sex gets better with age for women.)