Male/female brain

[Wondermule]

Largest study of its kind has come out comparing male and female brains. As predicted, very little difference between the two. Posting for resources:

academictimes.com/decades-of-research-reveals-very-little-difference-between-male-and-female-brains/?T=AU

I was under the impression that this more or less was what the research on these factors already showed?

The really interesting areas I think are the biochemistry, which you can't really separate from the brain, and also development, which may be connected to biochemistry significantly too.

This is a study of studies, not actual research itself. What we don't see is the cohort size and criteria for each study. If each study is awarded equal value then studies of 100 brains is given the same importance as a study of 10,000 brains. I'm not sure what are the facts yet but the brains aof boys and girls start to differ once puberty starts.
Here is an actual studty but the telling point is the last paragraph, which applies to most of the studies and applies very much to the OP link

"He is focused on accurately describing the differences in the male and female brain, not speculating on what they could mean."

www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/study-finds-some-significant-differences-brains-men-and-women

From a quick review of the paper itself they have followed current best practice so DoM's concerns about giving equal weight to different size/quality studies is perhaps unwarranted.

'Nonetheless, we have aimed throughout to integrate best practices for systematic review (Siddaway et al., 2019) within a historical framework that avoids vote-counting to provide a narrative meta-synthesis of the current state of the field.'

Here's the actual study

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804#bib1690

There are a mass of guidelines around writing systematic reviews and meta-analysis and a handbook that is canon. Available to read (free) online:

training.cochrane.org/handbook

I'd expect any reviewers to have been careful to validate that the correct guidelines and tools (that account for heterogeneity of cohort size etc.) had been followed.

What we don't see is the cohort size and criteria for each study.

This is false.

Here is an actual studty [sic]

This is actually a popular science piece.

Ritchie, et al. is included in the meta-analysis and is cited numerous times in the Eliot, et al. paper itself.

the brains aof boys and girls start to differ once puberty starts

And the brains of London cabbies start to differ from the brains of non-cabbies when they start to sit The Knowledge.

Amazing how a change in life experience and learning opportunities can physically affect the structure of the brain.

Makes one wonder what the brains of girls and women would look like if they weren't bombarded with sexist messages 24/7.

What we don't see is the cohort size and criteria for each study.

Well, I am sure that like all reviews, the links for each and every study are contained in the document for us all to see. Perhaps it is worth looking before discounting it automatically.

A viewpoint that is always open to accepting new information or new aspects should look first and check if you have concerns before disparaging the work, surely?

I guess it comes back to the nature: nurture debate, fascinating though what the brain does.

I can't help feeling that these kinds of studies completely miss the point. It seems that they are looking for physical differences between male and female brains, and didn't find any.

That is not the same thing as saying there are no differences between men and women in terms of psychology, interests, behaviour etc though is it? As an analogy, you could compare an iPhone with an Android phone. You would find no significant differences in the hardware, but they operate very differently.

That is not the same thing as saying there are no differences between men and women in terms of psychology, interests, behaviour etc though is it?

No, and there are some obvious differences in behaviour. Men commit about 90% of violent crimes and over 98% of sexual crimes.