London, July 31 - Differences in how male and female brains process visual information could be a legacy of our hunter-gatherer past, according to a recent study.

In a visual task, carried out by Helen Stancey at Hammersmith & West London College, men and women used a laser pointer to mark the midpoint of lines on a piece of paper within hands-reach and again beyond hands-reach.

The place where the 24 women and 24 men pointed to was marked, and the distance from their mark to the actual midpoint was measured to judge their accuracy.

Men were found to be more accurate than women at marking the middle of lines when the target was far away than when it was close by.

However, women showed the opposite pattern; they were more accurate at finding the mid-point of the line when the target was close to them than when it was further away.

'Evidence already exists that separate pathways in the brain process visual information from near and far space. Our results suggest that the near pathway is favoured in women and the far pathway is favoured in men, said Stancey.