3 ms·

TLDR; Evidence is piling up that the male brain / female brain concept is nothing more than a myth.

by vorotato 10y ago

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
That's a terrible synopsis of the linked information. _They_ say (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811916307431 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811916...) that as the male brain is 10% larger in the studies covered by their meta-study the fact that the male amygdala, a small portion of the brain, is 10% larger in those studies means it can be normalised out and we can say that the male and female amygdala are not different. This might be the worst reasoning I've ever read in a scientific paper. Presumably the full study has fine structure detail comparisons that show that the male amygdala is merely an enlarged version of the female one, that there is no additional smaller structure in one than the other (which would be strange, meaning male neurons/blood vessels/etc. were larger, which would itself be a difference that warranted study). FWIW the highlights make the reverse claim implicitly as it says male amygdala are 10% larger but their brains are 11-12% larger. That would give the conclusion the male amygdala is smaller as proportion of brain volume. So, the quoted figures contradict the conclusion just within the abstract, that seems like bad form. The abstract says: >These values correspond to less than 0.1% larger corrected right AV [amygdala volume] and 2.5% larger corrected left AV in males compared to females. 2.5% isn't even possibly significant though right, like the "we share 99% of our DNA with chimps" statistics [however misguided they are]. Now, sure the amygdala could have identical function in human males and females, but this study doesn't seem to move any closer to that conclusion if the highlights and abstract are representative.

3 ms·

TLDR; Evidence is piling up that the male brain / female brain concept is nothing more than a myth.

by vorotato 10y ago

TLDR; Evidence is piling up that the male brain / female brain concept is nothing more than a myth.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
That's a terrible synopsis of the linked information. _They_ say (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811916307431 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811916...) that as the male brain is 10% larger in the studies covered by their meta-study the fact that the male amygdala, a small portion of the brain, is 10% larger in those studies means it can be normalised out and we can say that the male and female amygdala are not different. This might be the worst reasoning I've ever read in a scientific paper. Presumably the full study has fine structure detail comparisons that show that the male amygdala is merely an enlarged version of the female one, that there is no additional smaller structure in one than the other (which would be strange, meaning male neurons/blood vessels/etc. were larger, which would itself be a difference that warranted study). FWIW the highlights make the reverse claim implicitly as it says male amygdala are 10% larger but their brains are 11-12% larger. That would give the conclusion the male amygdala is smaller as proportion of brain volume. So, the quoted figures contradict the conclusion just within the abstract, that seems like bad form. The abstract says: >These values correspond to less than 0.1% larger corrected right AV [amygdala volume] and 2.5% larger corrected left AV in males compared to females. 2.5% isn't even possibly significant though right, like the "we share 99% of our DNA with chimps" statistics [however misguided they are]. Now, sure the amygdala could have identical function in human males and females, but this study doesn't seem to move any closer to that conclusion if the highlights and abstract are representative.