Funny Cartoon of Female Vs Male Brain
Chapter 16 of my book, 50 Human Brain Ideas You Really Need to Know. Here's the introduction to the book, the chapter about topographic mapping, the chapter about mirror neurons, and my post about the most important idea in neuroscience.
Summary: Subtle observable differences exist between male and female brains, but how exactly these relate to differences in behaviour is unknown. Such gender variations in the brain are often exaggerated and misappropriated, not only by the mass media but also by scientists, to reinforce stereotypes and perpetuate myths.
The science of sex differences has always been – and still is – fraught with controversy. Some believe that behavioural differences between men and women are mostly due to cultural influences, while others argue that sex differences are largely determined by biology. In reality, the situation is far more complex. It lies somewhere in the middle, and involves two related but independent factors, which are often confused or conflated.
One of these factors is biological sex, which is determined by chromosomes. Most people have either two X chromosomes, which makes them female, or one X and one Y chromosome, which makes them male. The other is gender, which is influenced largely by the socialization process. As we grow up, we learn society's norms about how males and females look and act; for most people, sex and gender are matched, and so they inadvertently conform to these norms.
Men and women's brains differ in subtle ways, and these differences are probably established in the womb, due to the effects of sex hormones, which masculinize or feminize the organ as it develops. However, we still do not understand the effects of sex hormones on the developing brain, or how the subtle differences observed between men and women's brains are related to differences in their behaviour.
Battle of the sexes?
The most obvious difference between the brains of men and women is overall size – men's brains are, on average, between 10 and 15 per cent larger than women's. In one recent study, neuroscientists compared the brains of 42 men and 58 women postmortem, and found that men's weighed an average of 1,378g (3lb), compared with 1,248g (2.75lb) for women. These size differences have been found repeatedly, but they emerge only when comparing large numbers of people, so some women's brains are larger than the average whereas some men's are smaller. These differences partly reflect the fact that men are generally bigger and taller than women, but they are not related to differences in intelligence.
Men and women's brains also differ in overall composition. Male brains tend to have a slightly higher proportion of white matter, whereas those of females have a higher proportion of grey matter in most parts of the cerebral cortex. Consequently, the cortex is slightly thicker in women's brains than in men's and, according to several studies, is slightly more convoluted as well. There are also sex differences in the size of individual brain structures. The hippocampus, a structure involved in memory formation, is on average larger in men than in women, as is the amygdala, which is also involved in memory, as well as emotions.
Another sexual variation is found in a structure called the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus. The function of this tiny structure is unknown, but research from four different laboratories has repeatedly found that it is almost twice as large in males than in females. It has also been linked to sexual orientation and gender identity: one study showed that it is more than twice as large in heterosexual males than in homosexual males, where it more closely resembles that of women; another found that it is smaller in male-to-female transsexuals, and larger in female-to-male transsexuals. These studies have been criticized for their small sample sizes, and the findings have not been confirmed.
Stereotypes and myths
Numerous studies show subtle differences in male and female behaviour and in cognitive functions, too. Men tend to be more aggressive and outperform women on mental tasks involving spatial skills such as mental rotation, whereas women tend to be more empathetic and perform better on verbal memory and language tasks. Findings like these are often exaggerated to reinforce the stereotypes that women are bad at reverse parking and that they love to chat!
In some cases, individual studies purporting to show sex differences in certain tasks are misappropriated. For example, according to a tiny postmortem study published in 1982, the corpus callosum, the massive bundle of nerve fibres connecting the two brain hemispheres, is proportionally larger in women than in men. This was widely reported to mean that women are better at multitasking, even though subsequent work has failed to replicate the results. A more recent study showed that women are marginally better than men at paying attention to sounds presented to both ears simultaneously – this was interpreted by some as evidence that 'men don't listen'.
Many of these claims are accompanied by the assertion that the observed differences between men and women's brains are 'hard-wired' and, therefore, irreversible. We now know, however, that brain structure and function change in response to experience, so any observed differences between the brains of men and women could also be due to differences in upbringing and socialization. To date, though, very little research has been done to investigate how different nurturing styles might influence brain development.
Box: The extreme male brain hypothesis
People with autism tend to perform poorly on tests of empathizing, or the ability to put oneself in somebody else's shoes, but do well on tests of systematizing, or finding repeating patterns. Similarly, women tend to score higher on the empathy scale, and men on the systematizing scale. These observations led one researcher to propose the highly controversial 'extreme male brain' hypothesis of autism. The hypothesis states that autism is an extreme form of the normal male cognitive profile, which occurs as a result of high testosterone levels in the womb. Accordingly, people with autism can be considered as 'hyper-systematizers' who focus more on patterns and fine details than on other people's thoughts and actions. The extreme male brain hypothesis has been used as an explanation for why autism is four times more prevalent in males than in females, and why people with autism can excel in disciplines such as maths and engineering.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2013/oct/06/male-brain-versus-female-brain
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