Male and Female Brains Show Significant Differences

The findings come from one of the largest studies to look at how brains are wired in healthy males and females. The maps give scientists a more complete picture of what counts as normal for each sex at various ages. Armed with the maps, they hope to learn more about whether abnormalities in brain connectivity affect brain disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.

Verma's team used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging to map neural connections in the brains of 428 males and 521 females aged eight to 22. The neural connections are much like a road system over which the brain's traffic travels.

The scans showed greater connectivity between the left and right sides of the brain in women, while the connections in men were mostly confined to individual hemispheres. The only region where men had more connections between the left and right sides of the brain was in the cerebellum, which plays a vital role in motor control. "If you want to learn how to ski, it's the cerebellum that has to be strong," Verma said. Details of the study are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Male and female brains showed few differences in connectivity up to the age of 13, but became more differentiated in 14- to 17-year-olds.

"It's quite striking how complementary the brains of women and men really are," Ruben Gur, a co-author on the study, said in a statement. "Detailed connectome maps of the brain will not only help us better understand the differences between how men and women think, but it will also give us more insight into the roots of neurological disorders, which are often sex-related."

I wonder if the differences would be reduced if the brains studied were those from poorer countries. I say this because, supposedly, for those in poorer countries, the job roles are sometimes equally shared across the sexes. I'm, of course, appealing to neural plasticity and ignoring the potential effects that sex hormones play in neural development.

I bet you in countries like Norway, where the sexes seem to cluster to stereotypical job roles by gender, this study's finding would be more marked (the opposite of the poor country scenario).

Lastly, I wonder if it can be shown that males who identify as exclusively "homosexual", have a brain that is "wired" more like the typical female's from that study. I say this because there was a study conducted that showed at least a weak correlation between homosexual males and female brains when it came to pheromones.

Of course men and women's brains are different.

Here is proof: If today is the 3ed and it is Tuesday, what is the date of next Saturday? Is it the 7th or the 14th? Hee hee

I'm very skeptical of research where all the data has p-values less than 0.001 and no effect sizes are listed. That reeks of an excessive sample size. This is the exact reason that the APA advocates using Confidence Intervals and why I'm increasingly a fan of Bayesian data reporting.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I wonder if the differences would be reduced if the brains studied were those from poorer countries. I say this because, supposedly, for those in poorer countries, the job roles are sometimes equally shared across the sexes. I'm, of course, appealing to neural plasticity and ignoring the potential effects that sex hormones play in neural development.

I bet you in countries like Norway, where the sexes seem to cluster to stereotypical job roles by gender, this study's finding would be more marked (the opposite of the poor country scenario).

Lastly, I wonder if it can be shown that males who identify as exclusively "homosexual", have a brain that is "wired" more like the typical female's from that study. I say this because there was a study conducted that showed at least a weak correlation between homosexual males and female brains when it came to pheromones.

A whole lot just became clear:

Also, if you really want to test for variations in poorer countries where job roles are shared by genders, a good comparison would be Finland. It's first-world and generally speaking one of the more gender-equal countries around.

Originally posted by Stealth Moose
Also, if you really want to test for variations in poorer countries where job roles are shared by genders, a good comparison would be Finland. It's first-world and generally speaking one of the more gender-equal countries around.

I'll take a look. From that documentary I watched, it was claimed that Norway held that "title" but they had some of the most polarized gender clustering in their jobs (like 90% of engineers were males and 90% of nurses were females). They documentary, or that scientists in the documentary, concluded that this was occurring because people got to choose what they wanted to do for a job rather than being forced to complete a job just to survive. I feel like I've stated this before...my memory is not what it used to be. 🙁

I am actually surprised Norway is so polarized when nearby Finland is apparently not, but I admit I haven't looked too much into it.

Just goes to why we need each other.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangle-over-men-and-womens-brain-wiring/

Originally posted by tsilamini
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangle-over-men-and-womens-brain-wiring/

Originally posted by Oneness
According to Shakyamunison, you are now = to JIA!

Not at all.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Not at all.

Originally posted by tsilamini
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangle-over-men-and-womens-brain-wiring/

That's about what I expected, yeah.

Originally posted by Shakyamunison
Here is proof: If today is the 3ed and it is Tuesday, what is the date of next Saturday? Is it the 7th or the 14th? Hee hee

The next Saturday will be the 14th, this Saturday will be the 7th.

-Source

SO from my understanding of the functions of the brain hemispheres (which is pretty limited), this would imply that (apart from cerebellar connectivity) women would display a more inherent understanding of their emotions. I.e. being able to logically explain how they feel/think. This is given that left brain is more creative and right brain is more logical (or the other way around).

Digressing, but on a slightly related note, I also read an article that spoke about an experimental (at the time) treatment for epilepsy and other related neurological conditions, which involved surgical severing of the corpus callosum (the bundle of neuron linking the two hemispheres of the brain. The resulting side effects were pretty interesting. Apparently, although there was a dramatic reduction in the symptoms of epilepsy, the subjects started exhibiting strange patterns in their behavior which they were fully aware of, but unable to control. E.g. While reading a book, holding it in the left hand (or right, I cant remember the role of the corresponding hemisphere exactly), the person would suddenly, and involuntarily put the book down... and in some cases that hand would then start doing something completely unrelated and out of context to the scenario. Another example is that while getting dressed, or carrying out other day to day tasks, the left (or right, once again) side of their body would suddenly stop, and carry on (involuntarily, but fully to the awareness of the individual) with another task.

This study brought about the hypothesis (which I think may have been backed up by further studies), that consciousness... or self awareness as we understand it was confined to one hemisphere in p[articular in all people. The logic/hypothesis implied that although the subjects were making conscious decisions to carry out given actions with one hemisphere, they were unable to communicate this decision, and its intent to the other hemisphere via the now severed connection (the corpus callosum). The result was that the "unaware" hemisphere (which was still responsible for the motor control of one side of the body) would get bored, or disinterested in the task and stop performing it. In fact if I recall correctly the action was indeed ceased entirely and no other action was carried out by that side of the body in its place at all (it lacked the ability to initiate, and was only able to follow the lead of the other side).

The way they narrowed down that the cocious mind was in one hemisphere only was that the side of the body that became uncooperative was consistent throughout all the test subjects.

Pretty crazy stuff. Love brain stuffs.

Anyway, thought you guys would find that interesting, sorry to stray off the point.

I think I have that journal somewhere in my only uni stuff. I'll look for it and post is here if I find it 🙂.

Originally posted by Kostabot
This is given that left brain is more creative and right brain is more logical (or the other way around).

The brain is not, in fact, arranged this way.

Originally posted by Kostabot
This study brought about the hypothesis (which I think may have been backed up by further studies), that consciousness... or self awareness as we understand it was confined to one hemisphere in p[articular in all people. The logic/hypothesis implied that although the subjects were making conscious decisions to carry out given actions with one hemisphere, they were unable to communicate this decision, and its intent to the other hemisphere via the now severed connection (the corpus callosum). The result was that the "unaware" hemisphere (which was still responsible for the motor control of one side of the body) would get bored, or disinterested in the task and stop performing it. In fact if I recall correctly the action was indeed ceased entirely and no other action was carried out by that side of the body in its place at all (it lacked the ability to initiate, and was only able to follow the lead of the other side).

That's not why split-brain patients behave the way they do.

A number of extremely important speech modules are lateralized (they're only on one side). If you ask someone "What do you see?" they need those parts of the brain. If you ask them "Draw what you saw." they do not. By keeping information from getting to the hemisphere that controls speech you can illicit a response that they cannot vocalize a reason for.

We also have cases of people who had an entire hemisphere of the brain completely removed. If consciousness were lateralized half of these patients would lose self awareness. This doesn't happen.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
The brain is not, in fact, arranged this way.

That's not why split-brain patients behave the way they do.

A number of extremely important speech modules are lateralized (they're only on one side). If you ask someone "What do you see?" they need those parts of the brain. If you ask them "Draw what you saw." they do not. By keeping information from getting to the hemisphere that controls speech you can illicit a response that they cannot vocalize a reason for.

We also have cases of people who had an entire hemisphere of the brain completely removed. If consciousness were lateralized half of these patients would lose self awareness. This doesn't happen.

I see. 🙂 Interesting point. I may not be recalling the study accurately. I'll make sure I look for it and show it to you, and if you feel like it you can clarify it for me. This stuff fascinates me. What are your qualifications? You sound like you have a pretty good grasp of this. Are you or have you studied psychology or neural-science? My knowledge is made up of info Ive come across in Uni (I'm an ICU registered Nurse, so I'm in no way qualified to argue with you here), and through my own superficial exploration of mainstream layman literature on the topic. My friend is also doing his masters in Psych and I get a lot of my sources and info from picking his brain.