palosaari@oxy.edu (Jedidiah Jon Palosaari) (10/21/89)
I heard somewhere that scientists have found in recent studies that there is a difference in the brain structure of men and women, in that women have a major connection between the right and left halves of the brain, whereas men do not. I was also told that this means that women can use both sides of their brain at the same time, whereas men have difficulty doing that and can only concentrate on logic *or* emotions separately. Men who do have this connection in the brain have dyslexia. Does anyone know of the validity of this connection, and its probable effects on thought patterns?
dmark@acsu.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) (10/22/89)
In article <55243@tiger.oxy.edu> palosaari@oxy.edu (Jedidiah Jon Palosaari) writes: >I heard somewhere that scientists have found in recent studies that there >is a difference in the brain structure of men and women, in that women >have a major connection between the right and left halves of the brain, >whereas men do not. I was also told that this means that women can use both >sides of their brain at the same time, whereas men have difficulty doing >that and can only concentrate on logic *or* emotions separately. Men >who do have this connection in the brain have dyslexia. > Does anyone know of the validity of this connection, and its probable >effects on thought patterns? A fairly-recent book by Diane Halpern has some interesting information related to this topic: Halpern, Diane F., 1986. Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. This book seems to do a very nice job of summarizing a wide variety of results on differences in mental performance of various sorts of tasks and activities that exist between male and female humans. One very consistent difference is that males tend to perform better on "spatial" tasks, and females to perform better on "verbal" tasks. Halpern then observes that there is also a persistent interaction effect with handedness: left-handed individuals "tend" to have spatial and verbal abilities that are somewhat more like those of the other sex. That is, left-handed males tend to perform better on verbal and less well on spatial tasks than do right-handed males, etc. Halpern takes this to be strong circumstantial evidence that there is a biological (brain function differentiation) basis for the cognitive differences. She also notes a lot of sex differences in cognitive abilities that are almost certainly attributable to "environmental" or "nurture" factors, differences in the ways male and female children are treated, etc. I recall hearing about 10 years ago about males having higher hemispheric differentiation of brain functions, and of males tending to be better than females on "single-minded" tasks, females better at performing integrative tasks. That's why so many of our top managers and politicians are female. :-) I also recall hearing recently that the brain-function hemisperic different- iation can now be studies using real-time monitoring of temperature in the brain. You can give someone a mental task and see what parts of the brain are activiated to solve the task. And I recall (with less confidence) that this was confirming the sex differences in brain function localization. David Mark Center for Cognitive Science SUNY at Buffalo dmark@cs.buffalo.edu
werner@aecom.yu.edu (Craig Werner) (10/23/89)
In article <55243@tiger.oxy.edu>, palosaari@oxy.edu (Jedidiah Jon Palosaari) writes: > I heard somewhere that scientists have found in recent studies that there > is a difference in the brain structure of men and women, in that women > have a major connection between the right and left halves of the brain, > whereas men do not. I was also told that this means that women can use both > sides of their brain at the same time, whereas men have difficulty doing > that It ain't that simple. The connection is the Corpus callosum. Both men and women have it. However, as a percentage of brain mass it is bigger in women than in men. Actually, in absolute terms it is almost the same size, but you have to take into account that on the average men's brains are larger than women's, mostly because on the average men's bodies are larger than women's and there is a roughly proportional relationship. It is not clear whether this represents any functional difference. There is also a nucleus in the hypothalamus which is much larger in males than in females in a variety of mammalian species. Since the name of this nuclei betrays only this fact, and nothing about function, I'm not sure you can make any judgments on the SDN (Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus) of the hypothalamus, unless somebody knows something about it that's more recent than about three years old. (Three years ago, the fact that it really existed was big news, and that's the last I heard of it.) -- Craig Werner (future MD/PhD, 4.5 years down, 2.5 to go) werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517) "I wouldn't have invited me either."