4 ms·

I'm sure I read once that they literally have a slightly different weight/volume (can't recall which) on average (even after you factor in body size). Also don'

• zaarn 8y ago
  There are some differences and MRI studies can predict someone's sex with better than random confidence by looking at the brain. However, one should keep in mind that these are after all just averages and statistical models. There is no "typical female brain" or "typical male brain". There is an average with a distribution and even outliers. People like to pretend that this means that females or males have different/worse brains and are offended when statistics produce bimodal effects.
  • natalyarostova 8y ago
    A reasonable interpretation of typical is average.
• rijoja 8y ago
  More neurons on average in a male brain by quite a large margin. I expect this to be fairly well understood and proven by now, as neurons would be a fundamental concept in modern neuroscience and if they can not manage to get this straight everything else is to be put into serious consideration on account of this. It's important to note though that DNA is optimized to use as little information as possible. Hence all the symmetry in the body, since it almost cuts down information requirements in half. This would talk against having vastly different brains in the genome as that would require storing the blueprints for two different brains. That being said cultural but perhaps more so influences from hormones might do their part. So to clarify I'd find it extremely unlikely that the brain would be fundamental different just as the heart or the kidney would be similar between sexes and from data requirements in the DNA it would be impractical out of an evolutionary perspective. The article mentions that in newborns there is little or no difference in brains, which seems to fit with my rule of thumb idea above. Then again in a culturally imposed straitjacket she continues to completely ignore the impact on hormones on the brain. Considering the fundamental ways that females differ from males this seems totally ridiculous and to me it looks like a striking example of ideological kneejerking.
  • speedplane 8y ago
    > Considering the fundamental ways that females differ from males this seems totally ridiculous and to me it looks like a striking example of ideological kneejerking. Her point is not that there are no differences, it's that those differences are negligible compared to societal influence, and people claims to the contrary are often doing so to rationalize their own place in society. We went from loin cloths to rockets with the same genetic code, yet, those differences are often dismissed in the face of minute differences in genetics/nature. > a culturally imposed straitjacket she continues to completely ignore ... This even proves the point. If you're right, and culture is powerful enough to put someone in a "straitjacket", then it can surely explain many of the differences that many claim to be explained by slight genetic/natural differences.
    • rijoja 8y ago
      My point being that even though the brains are similar at birth, the hormones are bound to have effects on it while the individual grows up. As such ending up with a male or female brain, categorized by the amount of testosterone it have been subject to. Anything else is sounds utterly absurd to me. Had I been suggesting that stress-hormones in teenagers would cause changes in the brain I'm sure you wouldn't fall into this predictable nonscientific dogma that everybody is exactly the same. > This even proves the point You could go even further and say that I was critiquing her for trying to replace one set of cultural dogma with another. Nobody questions the influence of cultures upon human being. Not a discussion that I intended, but is it not a good thing that society prepares individuals with fundamental physical differences in different ways. Wouldn't in a sense a culture that failed to inform it's offspring on the fundamentals of their existence be amoral at best and disastrously inefficient at worst? > We went from loin cloths to rockets with the same genetic code, Did we really, this is an exciting scientific discovery that you've made. Please enlighten us on exactly when evolution in human beings stopped? Last but not least I take great offence of being accused of being someone with the hidden agenda of trying to oppress and control half of the human population, for my own benefit. Had I've been doing this for my own self interest I probably had not dared publicly criticized, what many feels to be a controversial issue.