Spotted On: AskMen
If Mr. Right doesn’t yet fit into your busy Outlook calendar and Mr. Right Now is looking pretty irresistible in his snug jeans with that dashing smile, it makes sense to consider a friends-with-benefits arrangement. Unlike the random Cassanovas on Saturday night who’ll love you and leave you, a dependable guy pal who will take the time to learn what pleases you is a highly desirable thing, and as this AskMen.com article points out, plenty of guys are looking for such a scenario.

So why does this seemingly ideal set up often implode after its first few months?

You may not be wearing a chic cave girl outfit, but your female brain is still chemically wired to find a man who will build a nest around you and provide for your prospective children. Friendly hookups might start out that way, but many women ultimately struggle with the friends-with-benefits protocol because of this evolutionary progression. Once the hormone oxytocin is released in your brain after sex, you might find yourself unwittingly attached. So if you’re not looking for confusing drama or heartache, you may want to go into the situation planning to say goodbye to your sleepover stud after three months have passed. Consider it evolutionary empowerment when you’re the one to kick a “clingy” guy out of bed!

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Strokes in women are more common than you might think and the story of a woman neuroscientist, Jill Bolte Taylor, as described in this New York Times story, has captured the attention of millions and teaches us about what the functions of various brain regions do for us. The right brain is our most creative and expansive hemisphere and our left brain is our language, critical judgment and detailed brain hemisphere. We can train ourselves to switch between one hemisphere and the other with lots of practice.

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In adulthood, twice as many women as men are depressed, a pattern that holds in most nations. In childhood, girls are no more depressed than boys, but more girls than boys are depressed by ages 13 to 15. Although many influences on this emergent gender difference in depression have been proposed, a truly integrated, developmental model is lacking. The authors of this University of Wisconsin-Madison study propose a model that integrates affective (emotional reactivity), biological (genetic vulnerability, pubertal hormones, pubertal timing and development) and cognitive (cognitive style, objectified body consciousness, rumination) factors as vulnerabilities to depression that, in interaction with negative life events, heighten girls’ rates of depression beginning in adolescence and account for the gender difference in depression.

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A Berkeley, CA, business can scan your brain to map the electrochemical spikes thought to signify attention, emotion and memory. Learn how advertisers are using this information in this San Francisco Chronicle story.

Spotted on: Yahoo! Shine
Aliza Sherman isn’t fond of the term “mompreneur,” as she notes in her recent Shine blog post, but the growing popularity of the work-from-home model for busy power mothers may mean that the highly sought after C-suite is moving to the living room.

After all, what is a talented mom who is toggling between home and work to do with her well-educated female brain if her focus and decision-making ability is stretched too thin? As I wrote in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review:

“Many women are sidelined, ultimately, by a timing issue. There’s a certain age, long established by large organizations, at which professionals must decide to make their play for the big promotion—the one that will put them in line for the C-suite—and while it’s a good time for men on average, it’s not a good time for women. That go-for-it moment typically comes in one’s forties, when managers have gained the knowledge and perspective needed to take on real stewardship of a business. But at that phase of life, women with children already have a lot on their plates. Not only are they usually expected to handle the lion’s share of responsibility on the home front (even when both members of a couple hold full-time jobs), but their own brain chemistry makes it hard for them to do otherwise. For reasons important to the survival of the species, women in childbearing years undergo changes that intensify their focus on the viability of offspring. It’s a passing phenomenon, but ill-timed for those with career ambitions …
If the same call came a few years later, many women would seize the opportunity. The very woman who could not find the capacity to green-light her own promotion in her forties can be, in her fifties, ready to take on the world.”

Companies certainly should re-evaluate their advancement structures, but women should also recognize that there are many non-traditional options available to them, particularly in web-based businesses. There’s nothing cutesy about being a “mompreneur” when you’re raking in the big bucks and balancing your work and life on your own terms.

Dr. Brizendine responds to reader questions about the effects of menopause on childless women, how to manage a low libido, and severe PMS that causes debilitating mood swings. Listen here.

SPOTTED ON: Seventeen
When they woke up to watch cartoons at 6am, you probably wished for the time when your kids would sleep the day away as teenagers, but now that you can’t get them out of bed for practice, school or family dinner, what gives?

It’s important to let your kids sleep, though. Repeated studies show that about one year before puberty, the teen brain needs 10 hours of shut-eye in every 24-hour cycle.

As this 18-year-old Seventeen magazine reader asked in her letter to their experts, it may be hard to manage getting the requisite amount of sleep with other time commitments. Try to fit it in, even if it does mean an after school nap. The teen brain is under construction making new connections and more importantly–weeding out what it doesn’t need anymore. If you’re just too busy, let your teens sleep in on the weekends at least, this may be the only way their brains can catch up on their sleep-debt from the week. Bonus: They may just be a little less irritable.