[comp.society.women] Women and Brains

skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Patricia Roberts) (11/07/88)

From: chase@orc.olivetti.com (David Chase)
> On the subject of brain "wiring", anybody have statistics on the
occurrence of epilepsy in each sex?  With different "bandwidth" between
the hemispheres, I would expect the sexes to show a notable asymmetry.

You'd have to be careful with these figures, because (I think) epilepsy
is usually a side-effect of something else; a stroke, a brain tumor,
brain surgery, or a blow to the head.  It also can run in families; I don't
know much about that.  It is also more common in seriously retarded
children.  Drug withdrawal can also produces seizures that are very
similar to epileptic seizures, though they eventually go away.  It also
happens that someone will have one seizure in their adolesence, do the
standard treatment, and never have another.  Take away all that, and
I'm not sure you'd have much of a sample left.  

I'm speaking from experience and curiosity -- I whacked my head on
some pavement pretty hard 11 years ago, had some seizures immediately
afterwards, and spent three years taking Dilantin.  During that time
I met quite a few people who were taking Dilantin, talked to several
neurologists, and read what I could find.

David

==================================================================
From: Alan J Rosenthal <flaps%dgp.toronto.edu@RELAY.CS.NET>

References: <5688@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <5715@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <5719@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto

djk@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Doris J. Karlson) writes:
>They found that the bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the
>brain is consistently and significantly thicker in females than in males.

Mental developments can affect the physical structure of the brain.  So this
is not evidence for built-in differences as opposed to cultural influences, as
I believe it was intended to be.

ajr

edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) (11/11/88)

A warning: about a century ago studying brain anatomy was all the rage,
only instead of measuring the thickness of the corpus callosum, they
were measuring the size of the brain and the shape of the frontal lobes.
Using these techniques, scientists managed to ``prove'' that non-white
races were lighter of brain and thus intellectually inferior.  The same
``proofs'' also were given for the intellectual inferiority of women.

Of course, we now know that the correlation between brain weight and
intelligence doesn't exist.  It does, however, correlate highly with
body size, which is why these scientists prefered to use Pygmys as
representatives of the black race.  And, of course, women just happened
to be smaller on the average than men.

(All of this is magnificently documented in Steven Jay Gould's ``The
Mismeasure of Man.'' Given some of the claims I've seen made by certain
contemporary sociobiologists, we haven't advanced very far in 100
years.)

As to the original comment on Lacanian feminists' ideas--it's
fascinating that they have turned what was essentially a patriarchial
philosophy onto its head.  But I don't see any more evidence for their
point of view than the original.  Like others have pointed out, there is
a gross ethnocentrism implied by the male=logic, female=intuition
assumptions they make.  Not every culture was polluted by Aristotle and
friends...

		-Ed Hall
		edhall@rand.org
		{...}!vortex!randvax!edhall
		{...}!hplabs!sdcrdcf!randvax!edhall

russ@uunet.UU.NET (Russell Lawrence) (11/17/88)

In article <5825@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>, edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) writes:
> As to the original comment on Lacanian feminists' ideas--it's
> fascinating that they have turned what was essentially a patriarchial
> philosophy onto its head.  But I don't see any more evidence for their
> point of view than the original.  Like others have pointed out, there is
> a gross ethnocentrism implied by the male=logic, female=intuition
> assumptions they make.  Not every culture was polluted by Aristotle and
> friends...

Hate to be nitpicky, but the use of the sexual metaphors, 'male' and 
'female', to describe logical and intuitive thinking is much older than 
Aristotle and is also found in diverse cultures that were relatively 
untouched by Hellenistic philosophy.  After all, Alexander the Great 
didn't really conquer the whole world.  

After much research, I'm convinced that the use of male and female 
imagery to describe modes of thought probably represents what historians 
would call a "recurrent idea"...  not simply a "continuing" one.  In 
other words, it tends to arise from the depths of the mind and is not 
simply propagated by verbal contact from one source to another.  Recent 
neurophysiological research concerning the effects of androgen on brain 
lateralization may explain why the idea is 'recurrent'.  

Incidently, to the best of my knowledge, male/female symbolism is always 
associated with meditative disciplines aimed at *enhancing* the 
intuitive mode.  As such, the symbolism is never perjorative in its 
native context though some of us may perceive it as such owing to the 
'logic' bias in our own culture.  
-- 
Russell Lawrence, WP Group, New Orleans (504) 456-0001
{uunet,killer}!wpg!russ