"Even more intriguing was that both genders relied heavily on the Hippocampus, a part of the brain that's usually associated with memory."

Why is this intriguing? It would stand to reason a person would use stored images when trying to imagine a future event, especially in great detail.

@ThaKadinskyPapers: Well, that's why it's intriguing. This study offered hard evidence for the idea that people essentially "remember" the future. I find that incredibly cool.

This is only surprising to those people who had already bought into the myth that the differences between male and female brains outnumber the similarities. As those of us who reacted to this research with a smug shrug will tell you, the contrary is quite strongly indicated by neuroscience so far, even taking into account publication bias in favour of 'interesting' findings of difference rather than those which support the null hypothesis - the only reason this got any attention is because it can now be spun as somehow condradicting the 'orthodoxy'.

@Acheman: Well I pretty much live to contradict the orthdoxy, so there you go. I really think that there are a not of unfounded poisonous stereotypes of male/female differences out there and any study that proves them wrong is helpful in the fight for truth and justice and all that crap.

@Annalee Newitz: Yeah, I agree really. I suppose it's just depressing that the context is such that it's necessary to point them out.
The latest xkcd just sums it all up really.

Ach. That repetition was ugly. Sometimes it's possible to keep it too 'real'.

@ThaKadinskyPapers: True. After all, in a future event, you'll have the same basic constructs you have normally: familiar places, people, etc. You would have to dredge up representations of these things in order to be able to assemble your future "picture" of things.

@Annalee Newitz: And the mechnism works in reverse -- people can "imagine the past". Thus, the controversy over the validity of repressed memories and the power of hypnotic suggestion.

@NefariousNewt: Agreed.

it's a little scary too though to think that we have to draw on our memories to imagine a future. because i have few memories that i would like to repeat, really. few memories that would indicate the kind of world we might build in the future. maybe this is why we fall into the same stupid traps over and over. i kind of wish one of the genders would use a different part of their brain...

too bad it's a quasi-experiment.

@J.D.Regent: Well, it's not so much the memories themselves that get used, but the bits and pieces of them, e.g. colors, shapes, places. You brain assembles pictures of the future from these bits and pieces. Occasionally whole fragments will be used, such as in dreams that are based on past events but with altered situations (different people, different time o f day, etc.).

Big deal, we're all humans. A more interesting question is whether animals can recall a specific past event (what cognitive scientists call episodic memory) and whether those brainy border collies with a vocabulary of over 200 words can be called intelligent:
[ngm.nationalgeographic.com]

It's cool that men and women use the same parts of their brain to remember the past and predict the future but they're going to have to use that MRI much lower down on the body to find out where the Bush Administration does it.

just because we use the same part of the brain means that we essentially project a common future?

I'm not buying that for one second.

I dunno....I mean my GF always seems to know what I am going to say before I say it....and she seems to have my future already planned out for me ;P

@J.D.Regent: I'm guessing it works like this. We use past narratives (e.g. tv shows we've watched, real life, books), which are stored in the hippocampus, to imagine the future.

And it's not totally objective so we'll incorporate emotions we've experienced into the future as well (like the little WHOO! you felt when you saw Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap for the first time).

Pomo brainwaving.

And for the record... I don't know if anyone can predict the future. Maybe "imagine the future" or "envision the future" would be more appropriate? Ugh, need a thesaurus.

so basically all they are saying is that the general brain functions in men and women work the same way; rehashing old memories to create new future ones?

Big surprise! The future is sturctured based on the past and present (obviously). If you are a typical woman you base more of your decisions on emotion. That has be shown a million times over with undergrads taking basic psych profile tests. So, the future for women in more likely to also incorporate parts of the brain where emotions are stronger, such as the primal core structures that are lizard in nature, like Godzilla.

Hehehe...just kidding. Kinda.

@ShoplifterOfTheWorld: I agree. The title made me think this was some sort of woowoo article.

I use sheep entrails.

@Jeff-Minor: How does it feel, being made of fail?

@HeatherNumber1:

Those things are lousy protection against STDs - you should use the synthetics.
-Kle.

Ok, so Schacter and Maguire are totally dreamy scientists, but the masthead has nothing to do with this study or their work. Search the pdf for the words "gender", "sex" or even "female". If you were actually going to do a study looking at gender differences, you would include at least 15 subjects from each sex and then run a direct male/female contrast on your brain data.

We're allowed to be incessant fanboys even if it's about stats and neuroscientsts, right?

Picardia said, "...fail?" Sorry, don't know what you mean.