How Ovulation Affects Your Creativity (Even If You're a Guy)

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A women's menstrual cycle can affect more than just the way she feels physically and emotionally. The hormone changes might also influence creativity, with research suggesting the phases before and during ovulation can spur creativity—in both women and the men around them.

German researchers tested 34 healthy women (21-31 years old) on creativity assessments during the four different phases of their menstrual cycles. (Half of the women were a control group taking oral contraceptives, which regulate sex hormones.) The study found that:

During the preovulatory phase, creativity was in general improved when serum concentrations of estrogen (E2) and luteinizing hormone (LH) were highest whereas motor perseveration decreased. In control women, there was no preovulatory improvement of divergent thinking and no preovulatory decrease in motor perseveration.

Another study (PDF) of 28 women and 10 men (18-25 years old) found similar results, with "figural creativity" (thinking creatively with pictures, as opposed to words) significantly higher in women during the follicular (that preovulatory phase) and luteal phases (post-ovulation).

Interestingly enough, women near their peak fertility seem to prefer men who display more creativity rather than wealth, at least during that short time. And it's possible that men pick up on those cues and subconsciously respond by displaying more creativity. CNN writes:

A new study suggests that when young men interact with a woman who is in the fertile period of her menstrual cycle, they pick up on subtle changes in her skin tone, voice, and scent - usually subconsciously - and respond by changing their speech patterns.

Specifically, they become less likely to mimic the woman's sentence structure. According to the researchers, this unintentional shift in language may serve to telegraph the man's creativity and nonconformity - qualities that are believed to attract potential mates.

It seems that when the sex fluids are flowing more readily, so too might our creative juices.

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The Efficiency Advantages of Discrete Video Playing cards (Even for Non-Players) 2014

The Efficiency Advantages of Discrete Video Playing cards (Even for Non-Players) 2014

If you're a PC gamer, you already know that upgrading your computer's video card will give you the most effective gaming performance boost. PCWorld argues, however, that a discrete graphics card belongs in most individuals's desktop PCs-not just gamers.

AMD's and Intel's integrated graphics (graphics technologies coupled with the processor) are pretty capable these days, but they're still far less powerful than discrete video cards when it comes to performance—and not just in games, either:

Games aren't the only applications that benefit from the power of a discrete GPU. AMD's and Nvidia's GPUs are made up of thousands of processors that can carry out multiple operations simultaneously. Any application that benefits from such parallel processing—be it an image-editing program like Photoshop, data-encryption software, or a distributed-computing project like Folding@Home or Seti@Home—will run faster with the assistance of a more powerful GPU.

PCWorld's tests show performance boosts of 3% to 19% on PCMark's productivity benchmarks when using discrete graphics cards (a ~$300 AMD Radeon R9 XFX card) versus integrated ones in the same systems. The greatest boosts were for the home suite than the work suite.

Even casual, browser-based games like Farmville and Angry Birds would have significant performance gains (about 1.5 to 2X the performance) from a discrete video card upgrade. The only place they didn't seem to help was in video playback.

Of course, plunking down hundreds of dollars for a new video card won't be worth it if the rest of the system is a bottleneck (an older processor or not enough memory). And there are other upgrades that will give you more bang for your buck, depending on your usage.

The tests suggest, though, that a discrete video card might not be just for gamers. Keep that in mind if you have the cash and are upgrading or building your own desktop PC to future proof it.

Tested: Why nearly every desktop PC could use a video card upgrade | PCWorld

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