The interesting bit was in the way that men and women use their brains differently - quite radically so. Men use their "grey matter" more, women their white.
That's not strictly accurate. The article says that women have a slightly higher percentage of grey matter [neuronal cell bodies] than men, so the corollary of this is that men have a slightly higher percentage of white matter [neuronal axons]. There's no such thing as "using one's grey matter more", because for a neuron to fire, it needs to use both the grey [cell body] bit and the white [axonal] bit.
Women are also using more of their brain more of the time - both temporal lobes, for instance, in situations when men only use one.
Again, allow me to nitpick: all the brain's cells are functioning - albeit sometimes at a relatively low level - all the time, else they'd die. While the research cited does seem to indicate that increases in brain function during a particular task are sometimes more widespread in the female brain, it also points out that this does not necessarily result in different performance on that task - in other words, there is more than one cognitive way of skinning a cat. Part of the finding you cite, about the temporal lobe, may be as a result of the corpus calossum (bit that joins the two hemispheres) being proportionally larger in women.
I get quite annoyed by people's fixation on sex*-differences, because most of the time - as in this article, with one notable exception - it betrays their ignorance [present company excepted!] of statistics, specifically of the normal distribution curve. That is to say, while these things may be true of men or women in general, for any given woman or man, they may very well not be. As one such woman (very good at mental rotation, spatial stuff, navigation by geometry, etc etc), it irritates the pants off me that I am damned a priori by the behaviour of the female population as a whole.
The other thing that irritates me greatly is the way people use this information. I am reasonably content that articles on sex-differencees published in peer-review journals are, in general, decent science, and I have no reason to be suspicious of their findings or motives (though one could always wish for bigger sample sizes). However, when this stuff filters down to the popular media, it is usually used as a stick with which to beat one or other of the sexes, or with some agenda in mind (women can't be good professors; men can't look after children or ask for help). Personally, every time someone says "oh, but men/women can't [whatever]", I want to smack them over the head with a statistics primer. I realise that most people can only work in generalities to remain sane, but I just think of this as sexism. You can't judge an individual's capabilities on the basis of their sex; this can only be done for an entire population.
Sorry, rant over. For now ;)
* I'd prefer to use the word sex because I think of that as a fairly immutable, biological label; gender, to psychologists, is more of a social construct.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2006-08-07 07:12 am (UTC)The interesting bit was in the way that men and women use their brains differently - quite radically so. Men use their "grey matter" more, women their white.
That's not strictly accurate. The article says that women have a slightly higher percentage of grey matter [neuronal cell bodies] than men, so the corollary of this is that men have a slightly higher percentage of white matter [neuronal axons]. There's no such thing as "using one's grey matter more", because for a neuron to fire, it needs to use both the grey [cell body] bit and the white [axonal] bit.
Women are also using more of their brain more of the time - both temporal lobes, for instance, in situations when men only use one.
Again, allow me to nitpick: all the brain's cells are functioning - albeit sometimes at a relatively low level - all the time, else they'd die. While the research cited does seem to indicate that increases in brain function during a particular task are sometimes more widespread in the female brain, it also points out that this does not necessarily result in different performance on that task - in other words, there is more than one cognitive way of skinning a cat. Part of the finding you cite, about the temporal lobe, may be as a result of the corpus calossum (bit that joins the two hemispheres) being proportionally larger in women.
I get quite annoyed by people's fixation on sex*-differences, because most of the time - as in this article, with one notable exception - it betrays their ignorance [present company excepted!] of statistics, specifically of the normal distribution curve. That is to say, while these things may be true of men or women in general, for any given woman or man, they may very well not be. As one such woman (very good at mental rotation, spatial stuff, navigation by geometry, etc etc), it irritates the pants off me that I am damned a priori by the behaviour of the female population as a whole.
The other thing that irritates me greatly is the way people use this information. I am reasonably content that articles on sex-differencees published in peer-review journals are, in general, decent science, and I have no reason to be suspicious of their findings or motives (though one could always wish for bigger sample sizes). However, when this stuff filters down to the popular media, it is usually used as a stick with which to beat one or other of the sexes, or with some agenda in mind (women can't be good professors; men can't look after children or ask for help). Personally, every time someone says "oh, but men/women can't [whatever]", I want to smack them over the head with a statistics primer. I realise that most people can only work in generalities to remain sane, but I just think of this as sexism. You can't judge an individual's capabilities on the basis of their sex; this can only be done for an entire population.
Sorry, rant over. For now ;)
* I'd prefer to use the word sex because I think of that as a fairly immutable, biological label; gender, to psychologists, is more of a social construct.