
Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal - petercooper
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/02/men-women-brains-wired-differently
======
napoleoncomplex
I wonder how the nature versus nurture aspect comes into play in this. Are
male and female brains inherently wired differently, or do they wire
differently as we grow up due to the different experiences and upbringing men
and women are subject to?

This might be a dumb question, but one that immediately pops up for me.

~~~
steveridout
Definitely not a dumb question, this is what immediately jumped into my head
too. I imagine it's very difficult to get an answer to this. A controlled
experiment is obviously impossible, but perhaps comparing results from a
diverse range of cultures around the world could give a clue.

~~~
V-2
A 100% proper controlled experiment with double blinding etc. is not possible,
perhaps, but there are transgender children who often are raised as if they
were of their physical sex, which obviously causes them to suffer.

I always wondered - if it's purely a social construct that boys play with
trucks and girls play with dolls etc., then why in most stories about a girl
trapped in a boy's body we hear her say "I wanted to play with girls"
(contrary to society's expectations), "I wanted to play with dolls" etc.?

I googled it up just now - [http://prospect.org/article/transgender-
candidate](http://prospect.org/article/transgender-candidate)

The story of Bindaya Rana (from Pakistani), who was born as a male:

"Bindiya Rana, one of Pakistan’s first transgender candidates [...] “I used to
wear my sister’s clothes,” she said. “And use lipstick and powder and nail
polish. I wanted to play with dolls and be in the kitchen.” Her parents
disapproved when they found her in makeup, beating her."

It's a gaping hole in the theory that we are wired differently "as we grow up
due to the different experiences and upbringing men and women are subject to".

If one's self-identified gender could be overriden so easily, there would me
much less personal tragedies in this world.

~~~
knowitall
I seriously doubt preferences for lipstick and nail polish are genetic. For
most of human evolution, there were no such things around.

~~~
nailer
Many species have gender based preening habits, either male of female. It
doesn't seem surprising that humans may do the same.

~~~
knowitall
Maybe, but my point is that lipstick and nail polish are very likely learned
preferences. Perhaps there is some mechanism by which a child picks the people
it learns it's preferences from.

I've read for example that kids learn their beauty ideals from the people that
surround them, but there is also a taboo to not fall in love with closely
related people. For example researchers looked at people living in a Kibuz and
found that there were hardly any love affairs among them.

~~~
nailer
I think it's a learned /expression/ of reproductive signalling.

I think of lipstick as just a human equivalent of a monkey with a big red butt
(which is natural, but doesn't serve any purpose other than to let other
monkeys know they're in heat).

They're human ways of drawing attention to sexuality. In our society we can't
paint our genitals, so we paint another set of lips. Or our fingernails, etc.

When a child picks lipstick, however, they're not being sexual, just emulating
adults. They same way they copy adults tone (ever heard a kid 'scold' another
kid, the same way their parents would?) Most infant animals do that too.

------
Aloha
Anyone who has ever worked with people of different sexes could have told
them. Men and Women go about solving problems in vastly different ways.

Women do better in high stress, high information volume situations, are able
to make more intelligent choices when little or no data is available. Men are
better with logic puzzles, but generally are poor listeners, and have poor
soft skills. Women are better managers of people, Men, better managers of
things.

Obviously, these are not universal truths, but there are certain roles I would
prefer a woman candidate for, others I would prefer a man, I'm going to make a
judgement on the person, but their gender is part of the experience package.

~~~
theorique
Better keep that under your hat in any consultation with HR.

It's one thing to have useful heuristics and rules of thumb, but when it
conflicts with official, blessed truths about "humans are all identical", it's
important to be careful what you say and to whom. Especially in the workplace,
where there can be real consequences for having the "wrong" points of view.

~~~
cookiecaper
The loss of meaningful distinction in gender identity is a major cultural
problem for the West that threatens our very survival. The "humans are all
exactly identical, no questions asked" thing is extremely problematic.

~~~
anextio
And what do you have to back up that assertion?

From the outside it looks like your comment could easily be translated as
"women need to know their place", but with fancier words to make it look
philosophical.

> "humans are all exactly identical, no questions asked"

No one asserts this, not even gender studies majors. What's problematic is
asserting that gender differences should have any bearing on what a member of
a particular gender is allowed to do.

Subscribing to stereotypes is what excludes a large number of extraordinarily
talented women from either entering or finding work in the tech industry.

~~~
Aloha
It's actually the increasing feminization of society that I believe creates a
huge problem for young boys.

Being unable to sit still, wanting to run around - now treated as an illness
Roughhousing - a normal male activity, is now a crime in schools.

Here is a good article making my point -
[http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/19/school-has-become-too-
hosti...](http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/19/school-has-become-too-hostile-to-
boys/)

[http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-
Misguided/dp/0684...](http://www.amazon.com/The-WAR-AGAINST-BOYS-
Misguided/dp/0684849577)

~~~
theorique
Christina Hoff Sommers is one of the leading feminists who has helped focus
some attention on the situation of boys, and making sure that boys are not
getting left behind as there is a surge of effort to make sure things are
"equal" for girls and women.

------
pygy_
From the main author: _If you look at functional studies, the left of the
brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more
intuitive thinking._

I was under the impression that this left brain/right brain theory had been
debunked by functional imagery.

~~~
Semaphor
I'm not sure, I think only the theory that some people are left or right-
brained has been debunked. And that there is a strict separation of concerns.
IIRC stuff like language processing is still >50% done in the left brain half.

But I can't find any relevant studies I'd understand on Google Scholar right
now so I might be wrong. And as I'm a layman take this with a grain (or more)
of salt ;)

~~~
pygy_
Language processing is indeed often lateralized (symbolic interpretation left,
intonation right, in (most) right-handed people[0]), and other specific tasks
are also lateralized, but I don't think you can generalize it like she does.

I do have a background in neuroscience (I did research on headache physiology
a few years ago), but I'm not too familiar with functional imaging.

\--

[0] Handedness is a strange thing. The gene that governs it has two alleles.
One is dominant, and causes right-handedness. The recissive one, doesn't
necessarily cause left-handedness. Handedness is people with two recessive
genes is random, roughly 50/50 (a bit less for each, since it can also make
one ambidextrous).

The clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation of the main cowlick is also
governed by the same gene, in the same fashion, AFAIK, independently (the
dominant gene makes the cowlick turn clockwise).

------
im3w1l
Brain structure is dependent on environment and can change in response to
training, so a cautious interpretation is advisable.

~~~
LaGrange
Exactly: "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.”

Which can be hormonal, can be cultural, can be both.

~~~
im3w1l
Body builders and transsexuals both take sex hormones. Would be interesting to
compare connectivity pre-during-post...

------
bjourne
Note that the article cleverly omits any numerical data, likely not to scare
of the numberophobic readers. Nowhere does it say whether female brains where
0.1% more connected, 1%, 10%, 100% or 1000% across hemispheres. It just says
"more connected." So, if you want to calibrate your gender difference
prejudices those numbers are very important -- without them the article
doesn't say very much.

~~~
fellInchoate
Wouldn't those numbers only be useful if you understood the impact of x%
differences? Does a 10% increase in left-right connectivity make you 10 times
better at some task or 1000 times better?

I think we (or at least I!) know too little for any of this to be truly
meaningful. But it's still interesting.

------
scrrr
I'm sure "Gender Studies" will find a way to discredit such findings.. ;)

~~~
anextio
Are you really disregarding, with scare quotes and a smiley, an entire field
of study to which many thousands have contributed papers, books, and research?

It's this attitude that leads to the sexism in our industry. Seeing this kind
of bollocks upvoted on a regular basis is extremely disheartening.

~~~
Domenic_S
> _Are you really disregarding, with scare quotes and a smiley, an entire
> field of study to which many thousands have contributed papers, books, and
> research?_

Hey, people do the same with psychology and religion all the time.

------
krcz
One might ask if there is a clear line between female and male brains (like
genitals for example) or differences are more like height - statistically men
are higher than women, but there's much overlap.

I believe that it is the second case - which means you really shouldn't base
decisions on the sex of person and brain "wiring" you believe she or he has.

~~~
hrkristian
That doesn't stop people trying to figure it out, and being consistently wrong
on every turn doing so. HR stands as a shining example here, hiding behind
"personality tests".

------
alexPetrov846
A skeptical review of this article and the paper it uses as a source:

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/getting-in-a-
tangl...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangle-over-
men-and-womens-brain-wiring/?cid=co15298434)

Significant portion: "... [O]ther experts have crunched the numbers and they
state that although the differences are statistically significant, they are
actually not substantive. And remember, these are average differences with a
lot of overlap. It’s possible that my male brain is wired more like an average
female brain than yours, even if you’re a woman."

------
octo_t
Please read Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender, because it goes into exactly
why things like this are bogus science.

~~~
hrkristian
Do go on, tell us how one book from one person makes all future scientific
research redundant.

While we're at it, lets go back to pi=3, like god intended.

~~~
anextio
It takes more than a few paragraphs to sum up the pathological problems in
neuroscience research.

Studies like the one in the article give us data points, but nowhere to draw
any conclusions from.

Conclusions in things like this are very often 'just-so' stories, of the kind
you hear from the Evo Psych nonsense-heads.

Almost every study purporting to show innate differences between males and
females has been shown to lack rigor, blindness, or has drawn conclusions from
imaginary sources based on pre-conceived notions not found in the data.

You can see those preconceived notions in this thread. Many of the comments
have a very strong stench of "of course, we've known this all along, men and
women are different, and it's unfortunate that only men are good at the things
that pay a lot of money, but that's life". The latter part may not be stated
directly, but anyone who has paid any attention to this kind of argument on
the internet knows that it's heavily implied under a very thin surface in the
majority of comments like this.

~~~
johnbm
So when even one day old babies are shown to pay different attention to
mechanical things vs faces between boys and girls, that's just evo psych non-
sense too? Or the fact that the countries with the most gender equality in
society show less preference in men or women to break with gender stereotypes
in their jobs?

------
AndrewDucker
Seems likely that a large chunk of this is hormonally affected - seeing as the
changes kick in at the start of puberty.

In which case it's worth remembering that hormonal levels vary dramatically
for both men and women, and I'd expect that over a large sample size you'd see
a fair amount of crossover.

------
olgeni
Prediction: massive virtual layoff of The Guardian journalists by Joyent.

------
dansimau
Shock, horror!

------
1angryhacker
THERE ARE NO WIRES IN YOUR BRAIN

~~~
spacehome
Of course there are.

