Women are crazy shoppers

Men have long suspected it, but scientists have proved that women are incapable of rational thought during a shopping spree.

Electrical activity in the area of the brain which deals with rational thought is reduced to nil during a trip to the shops, researchers found.

And zones which govern emotions go into overdrive whenever a woman indulges in a little retail therapy.

The revelation came on the day chart star Beyoncè Knowles spent £70,000 at Harvey Nichols' department store in Edinburgh.

Dr Michael Deppe, who led the study, said it could explain why women are often at a loss to say how they came to be looking in a shop window one minute and making a purchase the next.

But before men start feeling smug, it seems they get into a similar dither when faced with buying gadgets, fast cars or computer games.

Dr Deppe, an anthropologist from the University of Kassel, in Germany, said: 'Shopping frenzy is rooted in our ancestors' hunter-gatherer instincts.

Six million years ago, mankind did not need sensible thinking to forage for their food.

'It was an advantage if they could react spontaneously. Rational thoughts just got in the way.'

He added that there is nothing shoppers can do to stop 'shutting down'.