Men and women's brains are wired differently. Really..........

[JapaneseMargaret]

BBC article here.

Anyone know where a more in-depth article might be, so that I can come to my own conclusions?

They do say brain connections are not set, and can change throughout life. But absolutely no mention is made of the affects of society and nurture over nature. Both of which have a fundamental impact, surely...?

And at kasey.

It is certainly true that they have assumed sexual stereotypes are true and worked backwards.

What would have happened if they took, say a group of female engineers/physicists/mathematicians (who you'd perhaps expect to have good spatial awareness, etc. etc.) and tested them? Would they get a typical "male" pattern of "wiring", as they insist on calling it? Would they get a typically "female" pattern as they are women? Would these researchers jump to the conclusion, if they had "male" patterns, that they had male brains, rather than that their training had developed their spatial skills? If they had "female" brains, would they accept that the "wiring" isn't why "women can't read maps" (don't get me started!)?

I find the reference to complementarianism disturbing, due to its religious roots and use in justifying the patriarchy. The lack of any reference to different social expectations of the sexes is worrying too.

Far too many gross assumptions here, too much stereotyping and jumping to conclusions going unchecked, and poor reporting by the media, as per usual.

Incidentally, the main author of this study is a mathematician (admittedly with experience of imaging of the brain). This struck me as unusual.

Tellingly, the prof. in charge here has done much previous work on sex differences as related to MH issues, and actually says "it will also give us more insight into the roots of neuropsychiatric disorders, which are often sex related". Hmm, lots of extra funding for his research, then. But I'm sure he wasn't thinking about that at all, was he?

Would love to see the peer-review of this study. I have a suspicion it will be ripped to shreds. But the media won't report on that.

I'm another one who read this - I thought, well, on average, men and women may end up wired differently - but that doesn't mean they start off that way, and there's been plenty of evidence of how the brain can learn new ways of doing things after a stroke or something, so that suggests to me there's probably a lot more nurture than nature at work, and I'd need a lot more evidence to believe we are really that different. Not least because I'm pretty sure I'm a woman, and yet I still manage to do a techy job and read maps and parallel park the car and stuff.

At work, if anyone has read it, they've had the sense not to try talking to me about it. And not just because it's been manically busy.

There's a good book on this - 'Pink brain, blue brain' - which talks a lot about social influences and the brain's plasticity. Sadly I lent my copy to someone and never got it back...

I lent my copy to someone and never got it back

I solved the risk of that happening to my copy of Gender Differences by giving copies to people.

If women can't read maps, why aren't women doing the driving and men sitting in the navigator's seat?

The BBC article cites quite clearly a neuroscientist: We know that there is no such thing as 'hard wiring' when it comes to brain connections. Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning. So the article does tackle head on the notion of been hard wired and cognitive adaptation during life. Only a certain section of feminists believe scientists think humans are 'hardwired' and nurture is not important - no scientist worth his/her salt would agree with this.

Wrt the gender thing. Of course we (humans as a group) have natural instincts to fancy the opposite sex. The exceptions to the rule don't disprove the rule. When we say men fancy women and women fancy men this is just referring to the group as a class and isn't dictating what each and every member of the class should fancy. This is NOT religious right wing though FFS it's basic biology!

I find this sort of debate on the FWR board frustrating - it seems to me only a narrow section of feminist thought is represented. From some reading I've done recently, I've finally discovered the label: gender feminism.

Here is Cordelia Fine's reaction to the reporting theconversation.com/new-insights-into-gendered-brain-wiring-or-a-perfect-case-study-in-neurosexism-21083

theconversation.com/new-insights-into-gendered-brain-wiring-or-a-perfect-case-study-in-neurosexism-21083

sorry, forgot to convert the link!

Have you read the academic article on which the media coverage is based, LeBFG? It takes for granted that men and women's brains are structured differently and doesn't look at the effects of nurture at all.

Thanks Melanie. Good to see Cordelia Fine's analysis. Some key quotes:

'In an larger earlier study (from which the participants of the PNAS study were a subset), the same research team compellingly demonstrated that the sex differences in the psychological skills they measured – executive control, memory, reasoning, spatial processing, sensorimotor skills, and social cognition – are almost all trivially small.

To give a sense of the huge overlap in behaviour between males and females, of the twenty-six possible comparisons, eleven sex differences were either non-existent, or so small that if you were to select a boy and girl at random and compare their scores on a task, the “right” sex would be superior less than 53% of the time.'

For those of you who are interested in what scientists are saying about this paper.
(it also has some useful links)

storify.com/deevybee/postpublication-peer-review-on-sex-differences-in

I find your type of contribution frustrating too LeBFG it's just sniping rather than engaging or putting forward another perspective.

We know scientists have a rather more nuanced view on these things than the average copywriter with a deadine. But it's the copywriters that the general public get their information on, not scientific abstracts. that is rather the point

Having read Delusions of Gender and a couple of other books, I thought what a pile of old bollocks when I read the Guardian article, particularly some whiffle about skiing which seemed to suggest that only men would be good at skiing which is patently also bollocks.

Anyhow, as a bit of light relief, this might amuse: www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/brain-study-gives-men-and-women-new-ways-to-blame-each-other-2013120381650

'Only a certain section of feminists believe scientists think humans are 'hardwired' and nurture is not important - no scientist worth his/her salt would agree with this.'

That might be true, but I think the issue (as people have said) that the media reports it that way. I do have issues with the terminology these specific scientists used - you may not think they are 'worth their salt' but they did quite clearly use the terms 'designed' and 'structured' in their article. I would suggest that describing a brain as 'designed' makes you look more of a poor scientist even than using the term 'hardwired', but doubtless someone will be along to suggest silly little words don't matter and we can't expect scientists to actually say what they mean.

I think you've also reversed the logic with the point made about opposite sex attraction. Of course, as a generalization, men fancy women and women fancy men. Of course the exception doesn't make the generalization invalid. But originally, if I understand rightly, googly was saying that because we're attracted to the opposite sex, therefore such a thing as a gendered brain must exist.

You only need an exception to disprove that. Not everyone is attracted to the opposite sex, therefore, if that's your rationale for believing in such a thing as a 'male brain', it is inadequate.

Oh, and the religious right-wing references were about the funding of the study, I think.

In my post, I refer to the BBC article, which is more important as this is how the research is being diffused. I though the BBC article was quite good as it gets quotes from a few researchers in the field, even ending on this considered note: "A more subtle possibility is that bringing a child up in a particular gender could affect how our brains are wired."

I don't believe that a lot of feminists on this board DO have nuanced views of scientists, which is what prompted my post.

I know you referred to the BBC article, and I agree it's important, but it's far from the only way the research is being diffused. If you looked at the Guardian one whose headline has been mentioned, you might see why people get fed up.

I do think the BBC was quite good. But I don't think people were being quite as unnuanced as you reckon, to be honest - you have actually misrepresented what was being said a bit, IMO.

(I thought quite a few feminists on this board were scientists, incidentally.)

I can see why you take exception to certain expressions in the PNAS article LRD. Any notion of design necc indicates a designer i.e. a god, which I'm sure they don't intentionally mean. I suppose they use these terms because of facility?

I think talk of a male/female brain a bit misleading actually. You can be a very 'feminine' man who fancies women and indeed the fancying bit being innate. Even Cohen himself didn't say men had male brains: from memory, he says 80% men have a systemising brain whereas 50% of women have it. I'm not even going to discuss my opinions on his theory, I'm just bringing it up because no one is talking about male vs female brains.

Yes, exactly, that's why I objected to the term. I don't think facility is excuse enough - I really do think, given who they're funded by, it's likely to be mroe than that.

I was talking about male vs female brains, though. So was the article. I didn't know it had to do with Baron Cohen (assuming that's who you mean? Or who did you mean?).

Sorry, I should say, I do know there's a 'male brain' theory Baron Cohen set out; I didn't realize this article was directly related.

Having had a quick look, they never cite him.

I mentioned Cohen because that's where a lot of this talk of male and female brains in recent years comes from. The discussion here moved to male- and female-type brains (not sure if I made that clear) and I don't think that's very helpful because it implies that all women have female-type brains and all men have male-type brains, which no one (not even Cohen; no one outside outside MRA brigades) really think is true.

Ah, ok.

This study is about male and female brains. They studied just over 1000 men and women and their findings are that the males had different types of connections within the brain than the females.

I think people get het up about Cohen for different reasons - it's not really a related topic. His thing was that he wanted to call something a 'male-type brain' and he associated that with all sorts of rather flatteringly positive qualities. And then he concluded quite a lot of men don't have male-type brains anyway, which does tend to make me think there was no great need to use the label.

But this study isn't really the same sort of thing, so far as I can see. They do draw conclusions about what male and female brains do differently as a result of different architecture, as I said upthread, but they're not relating it to Cohen and they don't actually have a lot of caveats the way he does, either, though perhaps they would in a longer study.