Neuroscience - Of course course neuroscience is there to undermine tea ideology

Interesting, I always thought their argument was transwomen had women's brains?

I mean, as far as pop science goes, in the press, it's pretty much all pretty poor, yes? Which is fair to criticize, but in a lot of cases it's about reporting ambiguous or preliminary stuff as if it's far more significant than it is, and making exciting headlines.

I'm too lazy to read about the elderly nun study, but are they doing elderly monk parallel research? They'd be two very comparable groups - both would have undergone a rigorous and often quite harsh 'foundation' process in their twenties, and since then have lived by a strict rule of work and prayer - if you picked people from the same order they could have had an almost identical rhythm of life and the same focuses of prayer and meditation, both daily and through the year, for decades.

I think the whole area is so complex and nuanced and reliant on understanding statistics and how scientific research can show bias that is really hard to understand what she's actually saying.

In the The podcast she's very clear that there are significant sex differences but the methodology they've been using and chasing for the last few decades is flawed, as well as not asking the right questions. Shes mostly criticising the way neuroscience has been working. And clearly an awful lot has been ignored in favour of the more sexy brain imaging "proof" that men are from mars and women from Venus.

I also believe that, as a woman in the field, she's very aware of how bad science in this area can be used in sexist ways to oppress women - that's the whole point of her work.

She's also worked with people like Joel and Fine (testosterone Rex) so must be aware of the importance of hormones.

sfonline.barnard.edu/eight-things-you-need-to-know-about-sex-gender-brains-and-behavior-a-guide-for-academics-journalists-parents-gender-diversity-advocates-social-justice-warriors-tweeters-facebookers-and-ever/

That seems very dismissive of someone who seems to be a respected scientist in her area with dozens of published papers.

I've only read a few of her articles, but I've just had a quick google to see if there was any evidence that "she seems to completely ignore important elements of brain function, like hormonal profiles, that are clearly different by sex."

She replies here to criticism that she has neglected this issue, saying that this was covered in her book.

https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg24232240-900-female-and-male-brains-and-hormones-effects/

George Chaplin (Letters, 23 March) and Lawrence Bernstein (Letters, 30 March) note the omission of the role of hormones in my article on male and female brains (2 March, p 28). The focus of the piece was on brain structure and function, but the role of hormones is very much part of the arguments I consider in my book The Gendered Brain.
I devote a chapter to the changing views on the extent and stability of sex differences that are informing research in cognitive neuroscience and those informing our understanding of the links between hormones and behaviour investigated by psychoneuroendocrinologists.

I think it's this episode.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r1p4

I've never understood why people give GR so much time, she seems to be the epitome of trying to shoehorn research into the ideological box she prefers.

Of course it's true that to some extent you won't easily be able to tell nature from nurture in terms of brain structure, but she seems to completely ignore important elements of brain function, like hormonal profiles, that are clearly differernt by sex. There is research that attempts to look at human behaviour at a very early age before much socialization has occurred, as well as animal research. And she weights very very heavily the probability that differences are probably socialization rather than something else, even when they are really persistent across cultures.

But even if we give no weight to any of it, at best the conclusion would be, we can't tell whether brain structures differ much innately between men and women without socialization. Not that therefore they probably don't!

She does really seem to come out of a school of thought that thinks it's important to say there are no significant differences or it means women are lesser somehow.

I found this recent episode by Hannah Fry fascinating www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3TXBkZtyNRPpCCknlVpTnV4/what-can-nuns-reveal-about-the-secrets-of-ageing

(Can't find the player version)

A study into dementia in nuns showed that they could predict which nuns might get dementia based on earlier brain measurements.

But there was an outlier who threw all their results:

Despite her mental sharpness, Sister Mary’s brain showed signs of advanced dementia

When David Snowdon and his team examined Sister Mary’s brain, they were shocked. First of all, it weighed less than most of the others they were studying, suggesting many of the cells had died. And there had been no signs Sister Mary’s mind was failing when she was alive, her brain contained tangled tissues and extensive physical damage. This could be why…

Some people’s brains may be wired to protect themselves against cognitive decline

One explanation for Sister Mary’s continued mental clarity as her brain deteriorated is something called “cognitive reserve”. Cognitive reserve is still an emerging subject of study. Scientists are unsure exactly how this works, but the theory so far is this… cognitive reserve is the idea that lifelong learning can strengthen protective neurons so that they effectively create patches around damage to our brains that happens as we age. As a result, although the physical signs of dementia are still there, they don’t have the same impact on cognitive function. There are of course many factors involved here. It could simply be down to the placement of the damage that her brain function survived, or even genetic factors we’re not yet aware of. But one thing we are sure of is that Sister Mary’s story was nothing short of remarkable to David and his colleagues

In the episode they were describing Sister Mary's huge life long enjoyment of learning new things, right up till death, and that this stimulus helped her brain re wire and move around the physical signs of dementia. Which would indicate that external factors and stimulus can have massive impacts on the brain.

But the question remains, did she also have a very naturally curious brain to start with? Was that central to her personality? Or was she always encouraged to be curious from early in childhood? ?

The same outcome could be achieved using different pathways.

Very key, sex is therefore not deterministic. And demonstrates the extreme plasticity of the brain.

At the same time, when things aren't working properly (such as being impacted by an external environment such as puberty blockers) it means that the treatments or reasons or outcomes etc may be different between the sexes. Which is what the small amount evidence that was from the Tavistock seemed to indicate.

I read her book (and loads and loads of the other books published on this question), and I agree that her point really is the difficulty of disentangling what might be inborn sex differences from acquired gender differences due to different life experiences, and that doing the kind of imaging research that is being done is still in its infancy and we are probably expecting too much of it if we believe in now getting some kind of final answers. (Indeed, I have seen several earlier rounds of people arguing that they have found the final answers only to find out that they were incorrect.)

There are two aspects to this debate which matter, other than the fact that we are trying to force answers about really complicated phenomena, and the first one is that sex difference has always been used to support the view of female inferiority. This means that we should be very careful in attempts to do that.

After all, it is those kinds of assumed differences which are why women were in the past restricted from many occupations, why some Islamic scholars argue that women can't be judges etc. In other words, the existence of any possible sex differences are used to imply that any particular issue someone is interested in could be explained that way. Yet it's quite clear that had we taken all the earlier misogynistic arguments seriously we would not today have many female teachers, physicians, lawyers, politicians etc.

In short, this stuff has serious political consequences for girls and women, and it should not be done carelessly.

The second aspect has to do with the plasticity of the brain. Several studies show plasticity to exist, and it's unlikely it wouldn't have some impact on the sex differences we observe in adult men and women, given that the sexes still do, on average, live somewhat different lives. So environmental or social effects can accentuate already existing slight differences, create some where there might not be existing innate differences and so on.

The example I have in mind has to do with three-dimensional mental rotation in which the male advantage is the clearest in most studies. It turns out that the types of games boys tend to play much more are also the games which improve one's ability in that skill, while the play traditionally coded as female tends to improve one's language and social skills.

This is a chicken-and-egg type of question, of course, but one reason why even fairly young boys would test better on 3-dimensional mental rotation is that they have trained in it a lot more than most girls. Many computer games fall into that category. One study trained a group of girls in such games and found that their scores markedly improved in the test only after a few weeks of such training.

Another study found that women who were in architectural design fields scored high in tests of 3-dimensional mental rotation. This could be because they had higher levels of that innate ability, but it could also be because what they studied/worked at had improved their skills.

So it's difficult to tell these different possible causes apart, and we should keep that in mind. The second thing to keep in mind is the teachable nature of some of the skills that IQ tests have regarded as purely innate.

There's also a difference between the sexed brains showing different blood flows to different parts of the brains and possible differences in the final abilities to solve specific problems. The same outcome could be achieved using different pathways.

I agree to a point, but in a send school I feel it's that the xy chromosomes are more prone to genetic issues. Male embryos are known to be slightly less robust as female embryos (in terms of loss.) When in mainstream it was often observed that the children who tended to need more sen support were premature summer born boys. (Which is why the permission to delay school thing came in.) we have approx 9:1 male to female pupils on our roll. And that's not just about behaviour, that's learning difficulties, sp and Lang and gross and fine motor difficulties.

On the other hand, gendered approaches to toys and activities certainly has positive or negative impact.

I read her book a couple of years ago. I took away the strong impression that what she's really against is bad, agenda driven science. And, neurotrash.

it's an interesting thought experiment

It is. But we seem to be quite bad as a society at untangling the various aspects of trans identity. There's the claim that trans people have the preferences and behaviours of the opposite sex. Where this is true, they share this with people who aren't trans, for example butch lesbians may have some preferences more usual in men, but butch lesbians are not trans. So would such a test group butch lesbians and transmen together?

Trans identity goes beyond preferences and behaviours, and claims that trans people know themselves to be "truly" the opposite sex. So this would mean that there is a specific function of the brain that tells people what sex they are, independent of any conclusion someone may come to as a result of self-observation. Someone like Kenneth Zucker, for example, believes a male child may come to the erroneous conclusion he is female because he likes things that girls like - that his trans identity comes about due to self-observation and misunderstanding. But the affirmation model relies instead on an innate trans identity - something innate in the brain that identifies as male or female. A test that identified trans people would need to pick up on this, rather than preferences or behaviours.

Then there's the third aspect of trans identity: that somehow this innate identity means that a trans person should be treated as though they are physically, as well as psychologically, the other sex. So male people should compete in female sports, and lesbians should be attracted to transwomen. It seems self-evident to me that this makes no sense. Even if it were the case that there were female brains and male brains and some female brains were in male bodies - the bodies would still be male.

Just because at least some trans people have identifiable non-mysterious factors
(homosexuality/paraphilia/neurotic conditions/coercion or contagion) it isn't wrong to wonder about brain differences. If gender identity is real, there's only one organ where it can happen.

These researchers claim to have found something that goes beyond broad differences between the sexes and is genuinely divalent. No doubt it will turn out to be a chimera, but it's an interesting thought experiment - or Sci-fi premise - to reflect on what might ensue if it came out that some trans people (but no 'cis' people) had the 'wrong brains' (better yet for Sci-fi purposes if the 'wrongness' could be easily medically reversed). What social and political shenanigans would follow!

Every speech and language therapist and OT I meet say they treat far more boys than girls in schools.

But again the nature/nurture aspect is impossible to untangle. People talk to girls more than they talk to boys, and in different ways (for example they are more likely to hold a girl baby facing them and a boy facing away, so the child will have a different experience of associating sound, facial expression and mouth movements).

Many of us, when we argue against the trans activist claim that you can have a female brain in a male body, do so by saying that there's no such thing as "male" brains and "female" brains.

I think that's possibly the wrong argument. It seems plausible that there are male brains and female brains (ie broad differences between male and female brains discernible at population level) but that this has nothing to do with the trans issue. Because, actually, males who claim to identify as women don't for the most part behave or even think in what you might consider typically female ways. On the contrary, they have very often led typically "male" careers - in business, in the army, in IT. Once living "as women" they behave in ways that men imagine women to behave, rather than how women really behave.

I'm trying to write this explanation without using a certain three-letter acronym.

Similarly, if you look at the explosion of young adolescent females identifying as male, then what do you see? They are a long way from being typically male in their behaviour. For the most part, as the Hannah Barnes book shows, they have troubled histories often involving abuse and mental ill-health. They certainly don't have male brains in a female body.

I like GR and recommend her book highly.

Here she is on the question of "trans" brains.

Audience Member 3: Hi, I love your talk first of all and, as a woman in science, really appreciated the nod to that. So as you were talking I just found myself feeling really curious about, you know, gender is not just a binary, it is a spectrum. And so I’m just curious if you can speak to the state of the literature about what we know for folks who identify as transgender and across the lifespan.
GR: I think it certainly has relevance. I do get asked about transgender issues a lot. It’s not an area I research in, so I’m quite cautious because I think it’s such a complex area. A whole range of things: I certainly think that we need to move away from the idea— and I didn’t talk at all really about the difference between sex and gender. In fact, one of the explanation slides kind of whizzed past at some point. The whole idea of the biological sex, that, you know, whatever it is determines your anatomy also determines your brain. That I would say is the kind of biological sex, and the whole issue of the roles that that means you can play is gender. It used to be that it was so determined, that one was inextricably linked to the other. You only had one word, and it was everything was known as sex. And then about the 1980s, they wanted to differentiate them, so you had sex or gender. And now I think you’ll find that the word gender has taken over and actually means everything including biological sex. And there was a big row in the UK in the summer because there was some biology exam where children were asked about different chromosomes, and asked how we know that chromosomes determine gender. And there was a big uproar about it. Apparently it was originally sex, but they thought that might confuse the children, so they put gender. Which, perhaps, says it all. Anyway, so the idea is that we need to get away from this binary. And in fact, even biologists are saying, “We used to think it was a nice clear XX or XY, but that really isn’t the case. We’re looking at a biological spectrum.” Looking at the brain characteristics, if you look at all the data, there’s no clear distinction, reliably, aspect which distinguishes males and females. Certainly there are sex differences associated to hormone receptors, etc, but the role that might play in behavior and in society is probably been overemphasized, definitely been overemphasized. And similarly the idea that you have a gender which is associated with your role in the world, the relationships you have, etc., now that we’re starting to unpack this link, gender could indeed be a spectrum. And I think that’s what we’re seeing now where people are saying, “Actually just because you’re born a boy or you’re born a girl doesn’t mean you necessarily have to be masculine or feminine.” This comes back to the language issue as well. So I think the transgender issue is part of that. I think one of the problems is the remnants of this idea, or the fixation on this idea that your biological sex is inextricably linked to your gender. So that if you feel some kind of disconnect that you don’t fit—you are assigned a male, you are assigned a female at birth, you actually don’t feel male or female—very often people assume that there is something wrong with the biology, and that if you change the biology, that will resolve the puzzle, as it were. And there is evidence that that is not a wholly successful solution. But I think what we can do is just, if you say, “Actually there is no connection. Yes, you’re born a male or a female, but then you can be anything you like in terms of who you feel you wish to associate with or the role you feel you should play in life.” I think that’s an issue there. But I would say that I get into trouble because one of the aspects of individuals, particularly who want to transition, and I don’t want to trivialize this, but there’s a sort of claim that you know, “I’ve got a female brain in a male body or a male brain in a female body.” And then, of course, I come along and say, “Well actually there’s no such thing as a female brain or a male brain.” And I have had individuals who want to transition to say, “Could you scan my brain to show that it’s actually a female brain,” if it’s a man, and I say, “I’ve got no template to say this is what it’s like.” Sorry, that was a long answer to the question. Great question. Thank you.

Taken from here: https://townhallseattle.org/event_transcript/gina-rippon-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain/

She also says that the scientific community have an assumption that she and Cordelia fine are saying "don't do sex specific research."

And they're saying the opposite.

She says that research on sex differences is such an important area to research that it's important to get it right, and for the last couple of decades they haven't been doing this. They're spent too long looking at brain imaging and structures.

I'm re listening to the savage minds podcast, it's worth listening to understand where the majority of her work has been aimed and why.

Yes, context is all, and there's lots of scope for category errors in the debate. I look forward to seeing which particularly obtuse responses the Guardian chooses to feature on its letters page.

@theilltemperedclavecinist there must be some differences.

Every speech and language therapist and OT I meet say they treat far more boys than girls in schools.

The key thing is that we are talking about averages and generalising assertions across millions of people, and, as you say everyone is an individual. It's hard to have this discussion as context is important .

*vigo, sorry. Julian is a woman

Julian Virgo interview, savage minds, 2021

https://savageminds.substack.com/p/gina-rippon

"Gina Ripponn, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre in the UK and author of The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brainn (2019), discusses the reasons behind the current of “neurotrash,” the populist (mis)use of neuroscience research to (mis)represent our understanding of the brain and to prop up outdated stereotypes. In this episode, Rippon tears through the regressive myths of the “gendered brain” elucidating how women’s biology has persistently been weaponised against them through the persistent recycling of historical tropes within science—from the myth of the inferiority of women’s brains from the 19th century to twentieth century science which focussed upon women’s hormones. Addressing the failure of science to find sex differences in the brains of men and women, Rippon elaborates the need for research in the twenty-first century to take up different questions to include more research into neuroplasticity which examines how circumstances and context affect the brain and how the brain solves problems while underscoring the need for science to confront the biological script playing out in a social stage that has a “much more profound impact on how the biological script plays out than we ever realised.” "

Addressing the failure of science to find sex differences in the brains of men and women this is specifically in terms of "men are better at maths and engineering due to brains" etc

@parietal so the difference in the brains could be due to gender (environment / stereotypes / experience) rather than to sex (innate factors).

I find it hard to believe that every difference is down to gender. In any case surely the growing brain's social environment is part of the organism's extended phenotype, so some differences are inevitable, unless the child is raised by aliens.

@WarriorN Gina's stance is that differences in the male and female brain are not deterministic. Mostly in terms of cognitive abilities and personality.

Well my stance is that I shouldn't care if she's wrong. She's probably not, because who can think of a cognitive ability or personality attribute that's 100% exclusive to one sex? But if, today, someone proves that there is a cognitive test that only (some) men can pass, and no women can pass, then, as a woman, I will take it on the chin.