Scientists working at top US acedemic institution Stanford University found that when they hooked up men and women to an MRI scanner while they played their Xbox 360 or PS3, found that part of the brain that generated rewarding feelings was more active in men than women. Basically, men get more out of Halo 3 and Metal Gear Solid than women do. (Would be interesting to see the same test run while men and women watch "Sex and The City").

“These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become ‘hooked’ on video games than females,” the researchers wrote in their paper, which was recently published online in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

During this study, 22 young people (11 men and 11 women) played a number of 24-second games, based on gaining territory, while being hooked up to an MRI scanner, designed to produce a dynamic image showing which parts of the brain are working during a given activity.

The researchers found that the participants showed activation in the brain’s mesocorticolimbic center, the region typically associated with reward and addiction. Male brains, however, showed much greater activation, and the amount of activation was correlated with how much territory they gained. (This wasn’t the case with women.)

The researchers said, that successfully acquiring territory in a computer game format is more rewarding for men than for women. Allen Reiss, senior author of the study, said . “I think it’s fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial,” he said. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species—they’re the males.”

In other news, Canadian researchers have found that Grizzly bears do indeed defecate in forested areas. The research also found that national newspapers on slow bank holiday news days trawl up old scientific research in a bid to fill pages.