4 ms·

Increased blood flow in areas of the brain in women

31 points by InInteraction 9y ago

MisYogi 9y ago
More precisely: two brains.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Not really, no. Brains develop along with experiences, so two identical brains that go through different lives will develop differently. Someone who lives in solitary confinement for 10 years will have dramatically different brain activity than someone who doesn't, for example. So, sex differences in brain activity could be genetic, could be cultural. No real way to tell without putting babies in experimentally controlled developmental trajectories, with double blind caretakers who are selected for androgyny. And as for the "well, but this is still evidence there are two brains, regardless of cause" argument: Not necessarily. There are lots of axes on which we can slice populations into two statistically significant groups. In order to show that there are two sex brains, you'd have to show that the sex differences are more significant than other partitions. Plea to other users: Please don't downvote or flag my parent poster. They are politely citing a commonly believed theory about sex that merits discussion.
jamesmp98 9y ago
The article is a bit different than the title, but still interesting.
- dang 9y ago
  Yes, the article title manages to be both clickbait and flamebait, and to leave it as is would not only violate the HN guidelines, (which specifically ask for such titles to be changed: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), it would also do considerable damage to HN. Emotions are running particularly high about such material right now.
- InInteraction 9y ago
  It's a press release title, the title for actual research article is Gender-Based Cerebral Perfusion Differences in 46,034 Functional Neuroimaging Scans http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad170432 http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-d...
ousta 9y ago
I wonder what would be the comments if the title would swap men and women. Definitly this would top HN
TallGuyShort 9y ago
This would be considered sexist harassment in some circles. update: LMAO - it's been flagged and killed. It's almost like the left ignores science when convenient just like the right does.
- sctb 9y ago
  We've turned off the flags, but if there's to be a glimmer of a hope for a reasonable discussion we need commenters to leave out the partisan flamebait.
Scaevolus 9y ago
I wonder how they accounted for volumetric differences-- brains have structural differences between genders, with male brains usually 8-13% larger overall, but it's a lot more complicated than that, with volumes and neural densities varying across many different regions: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763413003011 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763413... This would trivially seem to affect blood flow, since blood vessels for different sized regions would behave differently.
lizardskull 9y ago
"The study also found increased blood flow in limbic areas of the brains of women, which may also partially explain why women are more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, insomnia, and eating disorders." That is the claim James Damore made in his argument.
- whatever_man 9y ago
  And you willingly ommited the other part of that statement: "The pre-frontal cortex, which is the location for higher executive functions such as focus and impulse control, was one region in which women showed greater activity" because it kinda contradicts that whole premise doesn't it?

31 points by InInteraction 9y ago

MisYogi 9y ago

More precisely: two brains.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Not really, no. Brains develop along with experiences, so two identical brains that go through different lives will develop differently. Someone who lives in solitary confinement for 10 years will have dramatically different brain activity than someone who doesn't, for example. So, sex differences in brain activity could be genetic, could be cultural. No real way to tell without putting babies in experimentally controlled developmental trajectories, with double blind caretakers who are selected for androgyny. And as for the "well, but this is still evidence there are two brains, regardless of cause" argument: Not necessarily. There are lots of axes on which we can slice populations into two statistically significant groups. In order to show that there are two sex brains, you'd have to show that the sex differences are more significant than other partitions. Plea to other users: Please don't downvote or flag my parent poster. They are politely citing a commonly believed theory about sex that merits discussion.

jamesmp98 9y ago

The article is a bit different than the title, but still interesting.

dang 9y ago
Yes, the article title manages to be both clickbait and flamebait, and to leave it as is would not only violate the HN guidelines, (which specifically ask for such titles to be changed: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), it would also do considerable damage to HN. Emotions are running particularly high about such material right now.
InInteraction 9y ago
It's a press release title, the title for actual research article is Gender-Based Cerebral Perfusion Differences in 46,034 Functional Neuroimaging Scans http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad170432 http://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-d...

ousta 9y ago

I wonder what would be the comments if the title would swap men and women. Definitly this would top HN

TallGuyShort 9y ago

This would be considered sexist harassment in some circles. update: LMAO - it's been flagged and killed. It's almost like the left ignores science when convenient just like the right does.

sctb 9y ago
We've turned off the flags, but if there's to be a glimmer of a hope for a reasonable discussion we need commenters to leave out the partisan flamebait.

Scaevolus 9y ago

I wonder how they accounted for volumetric differences-- brains have structural differences between genders, with male brains usually 8-13% larger overall, but it's a lot more complicated than that, with volumes and neural densities varying across many different regions: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763413003011 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763413... This would trivially seem to affect blood flow, since blood vessels for different sized regions would behave differently.

lizardskull 9y ago

"The study also found increased blood flow in limbic areas of the brains of women, which may also partially explain why women are more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, insomnia, and eating disorders." That is the claim James Damore made in his argument.

whatever_man 9y ago
And you willingly ommited the other part of that statement: "The pre-frontal cortex, which is the location for higher executive functions such as focus and impulse control, was one region in which women showed greater activity" because it kinda contradicts that whole premise doesn't it?