I knew it but couldn't prove it...

...until now.

Neurologist Louann Brizendine wrote the book, The Female Brain, attempting to explain why we women think the way we do. She explains that while men and women have 99 percent of the same genes, it's the 1 percent that makes all the difference in the world.

Here are a few tidbits of information:

--Men use about 7,000 words a day while women use 20,000. (Reagan uses at least 21,000, Jimmy about 1,000.)

--Oxytocin, the "love" hormone, is released in the brain after a 20 second hug from a partner--triggering the brain's trust circuits. (I truly believe frequent hugs stave off all sorts of emotional as well as physical ailments.)

--The areas of the brain that track emotion and memory formation are larger and more sensitive in the female brain. (We forget NOTHING.)

--Rejection, it turns out, actually hurts like physical pain in both men and women because it triggers the same circuits in the brain. (That's why our kids and spouses need frequent reassurance of our love and NO sarcasm.)

--Men notice subtle signs of sadness in the face only 40 percent of the time; women picked up on them 90 percent of the time. (And sometimes holding a sign above my head doesn't even get the point across.)

--A baby girl's skills in eye contact and face studying improve more than 400 percent during the first three months of life. Making eye contact is at the bottom of the boy baby's list of interesting things to do. (This continues the rest of their lives.)

--Connecting through talking activates the pleasure centers of the girl's brain providing a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of__________. (Ahem...this is a family blog but you know what goes in the blank.)

As a women who lives with three male brains and three female brains, this explains sooooooo much.