Male / female brains

Article released today by some neuro surgeons (sciencealert.com) who have used MRI on 1400 people

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The fact that there was so much overlap between characteristics of 'male' and 'female' brains suggests that most people don't fit into one of these two categories.

Instead, the researchers wrote, each brain "is a unique mosaic of features, some of which may be more common in females compared with males, others may be more common in males compared with females, and still others may be common in both females and males".
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Like any study, of course, this one has its weaknesses as well. For one, it looked at patterns of brain connectivity, but did not connect those patterns to behaviour, McCarthy pointed out. In other words, we won't know whether people whose brains fit mostly in the masculine or feminine zones also act typically masculine or feminine
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More double speak and no conclusions, par for the course for science.
I hope he can keep his government grant but its not looking too good right now.LOLOL

Every test I take says I have a female brain.

Hell-o Rachel,
Lots of studies have been done regarding male and female brains.
But an actual look at them, shows an obvious difference, but then again
looks don't account for how it's put to use I guess.
There was a TV show on the Nat Geo channel called brain games.
http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.co...-female-brain/
I thought the show was interesting. But I'm no scientist!
Much Love,
Kristyn

Many of us are capable of filling either the male or female role or both, brain chemicals and neural wiring notwithstanding. Sometimes it just comes down to pure choice. :battingeyelashes::)

There has been a lot of neurological research on "sex" differences of the human brain and most research will point out (as did the research quoted here) that there are anatomical differences between male and female brains. For example several studies have demonstrated that during fetal development female brains develop a thicker corpus collosum (the connective tissue between the two hemispheres of the brain) which allows for greater connectivity between the two halves and can account for bilateral processing of language mostly (I say mostly) demonstrated by women but has also been seen in men. Men's brains tend to be slightly larger on the whole (grey matter) but this does not mean smarter :). Women tend to have greater connectivity in the prefrontal and temporal regions (calm reasoning) and do tend to process emotional events basil brain stem (lizard part of the brain) and men tend to be more hemispheric . . . again not to say it doesn't vary from gender to the other gender. We have to remember that our make-up as humans is the result of thousands of years of evolution and early in our development as a species some traits would have been seen more desirable in in one gender over the other as factor of survival. Brain development is such an evolutionary trait and differences which resulted in one gender demonstrating a unique skill set would make her/him more desirable as a mate. This structural difference would be passed on to offspring and continue through evolution. Over time some of these traits may continue to manifest themselves more predominately in one gender with others falling off. However it does not mean the other gender won't also demonstrate those traits as we are a product of our genetics (mother and father).

However, all this goes to show we are truly unique individuals n'est pas?

Cheers

Marcelle

Rachel,
I saw this article and so did my wife , she looked at me over the paper and raised an eyebrow ! I shrugged my shoulders and said I know I'm part female so how much of you is male ? We do have more in common than you thought !

As far as the study is concerned it's just taking the small steps towards what most of us know to be true anyway !

Does gender influence brain development or do hormones? I would bet the second would be the better choice.

The differences between male and female brain development have been well documented over the years. However, I don't think it has much to do with how we want to dress. Clothing standards are socially determined and are in a state of constant change. Those who defy those standards do so for a wide range of reasons stretching all the way from recreation to gender identification. For recreational dressers, the appeal of the alternative clothing styles satisfies the various motivators that lead to crossdressing, while for the gender identifiers, the clothing is more of a necessary response to the internal gender needs. Put another way, for crossdressers, the clothing provides a thrill or excitement and the dresser enjoys emulating a woman primarily in appearance. In contrast, the gender identifier feels he is or should be female and the clothing provides a means of completing that feeling.

Masculine thought patterns have little to do with desiring male clothing and rejecting female clothing, That usual pattern is instilled in us by peer pressures and upbringing. Similarly, female thought patterns do not lead to a desire to dress in a more feminine way. The female peer pressures are far less directed toward anti-male appearance than are male peer pressures toward anti-female. On the other hand, they are often more fashion driven than are male pressures.

Veronica

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Originally Posted by gokatiegirl

Does gender influence brain development or do hormones? I would bet the second would be the better choice.

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I think you mean sex rather than gender? Sex starts with the second chromosome and denotes anatomical/biological differences; think male-female. Gender is a social construct; think masculine-feminine.

To answer directly, the (usually) binary of XX and XY starts the process, but hormonal infusions in the womb affect all kinds of things, including especially brain development.

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Originally Posted by Veronica27

Clothing standards are socially determined and are in a state of constant change.

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I disagree. Female underwear is very different to male for entirely physical reasons. Some men like to wear very brief lower underwear, but since the underwear is invisible to society, it seems unlikely that they do it for reasons of peer pressure - quite the opposite in fact, and if it's actually designed for men, it doesn't include a gusset.

Women's clothing standards versus men's have changed in one or two important respects, eg women now routinely wear trousers, and may go bra-less, but just as women's clothes have become simplified and more revealing, so have men's. 100 years ago a gentleman would no more have thought of wearing shorts and a t-shirt in public, other than at the beach, than a lady would have thought of wearing a mini skirt and a halter top. A century ago a hooker might have worn more revealing clothing than the norm, but she was shunned by all levels of society and her clothing choices were not imitated - in other words peer pressure had nothing to do with it- in fact she operated contrary to peer pressure.

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Originally Posted by Veronica27

...female thought patterns do not lead to a desire to dress in a more feminine way. The female peer pressures are far less directed toward anti-male appearance than are male peer pressures toward anti-female. On the other hand, they are often more fashion driven than are male pressures.

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I disagree with this too. I believe that hetero females dress, when conditions permit, to attract a male. They may well do it at work too, within limitations, but the display is most obvious on a night on the town. They do it because they are designed to breed, and it is natural to want to attract the most eligible male possible. This is why you tend not to see rich men dating unattractive women- they can pick and choose. So yes, hetero women are unlikely to dress mannishly, but it is entirely because of their thought patterns.

Hetero men dress mannishly to attract feminine, ie classically nest-driven women, because they know that those women will (in theory) most closely fit their ideal. Such women are unlikely to be attracted to men in dresses and make up, as we see time and again in this forum, and it's why wives are frequently shocked and profoundly disturbed when their conception of their partner as something approaching Alpha male goes out the window.

Only in the last few generations have we begun to see these traditional values questioned, and the result largely seems to have been a rocketing divorce rate, fewer children, increased emotional problems and a general disintegration of society. Not great news, in other words, except that women now have the Vote and can get jobs in previously exclusively male domains.

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Originally Posted by Nikkilovesdresses

I believe that hetero females dress, when conditions permit, to attract a male. They may well do it at work too, within limitations, but the display is most obvious on a night on the town. They do it because they are designed to breed, and it is natural to want to attract the most eligible male possible......

Hetero men dress mannishly to attract feminine, ie classically nest-driven women, because they know that those women will (in theory) most closely fit their ideal.......

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Wow.... really? That is a pretty interesting opinion.


As to brain differences between men and women, I found the following quote interesting in regards to all of you that say there are well documented physical differences in the male and female brain:

“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girls brain, or that’s a boys brain’ in the same way you can with the skeleton. They look the same.”

it was taken from this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...scientist.html

I'm a huge fan of Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice", which supports the difference between male and female development from a psychological, not neurological, viewpoint, with lots of practical research and sampling and minimal -I'd say none- theoretical speculation. I know it does not help the position of many posters here, but it is a very solid piece of research -and it stood the test of time pretty well.

The jury is out here, I have read this thread slowly four times and I am still not clear about it.

Sorry Rachel.

I definitely think that women and men think about things completely different a lot of times. And when I am en femme, I think that I think different sometimes too. I just think that it is a psychological thing since I am all dressed up like a woman and wearing makeup, it is really crazy though. I guess that I like the feeling of thinking like a female too, so I do it.
Hugs,
Bree :)

I read the same article in New Scientist. To me, the big take away was that, from their brain studies, we should think beyond a simple gender binary. Read the original it's good stuff.

Of course there are dozens of other scientific studies that have claimed just the opposite.
Maybe they were looking at the wrong things... Some areas of the brain certainly are similar between the genders, but what about the neural networks on how the genders approach problems.
Here are just a few science articles that claim there are differences between male and female brains.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0107082133.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1202161935.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0211094201.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0331121249.htm

I do not think the final verdict has been determined, yet.

There is misinformation being discussed about the study and paper. The researchers were examining the structure of the brain (for example from an MRI) to determine if a thought process could be identified to be male or female. The researchers acknowledged there are gender differences in the physical brains. They wanted to determine if these physical differences caused male or female thinking. They couldn't conclusively identify a given structure to one sex or the other when it comes to cognitive processes.

Nature has the desire to keep things simple, it takes potpourri of different people mixes them together and comes out with the simplest solution. Creating two very distinct physiological brains is a complex solution, instead what it seeks is a simple solution for reproduction at the basic level. So it's not surprising that a blending occurs and we have many things in common across the genders.

Now - nobody is denying a host of other factors like chemical/hormonal/genetic influence the development of the brain from conception/womb OR social, educational, and psychological environments also affect gender. The media has incorrectly portrayed the study with flashy headlines....and it worked, look at the comments above.

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Originally Posted by Beverley Sims

The jury is out here, I have read this thread slowly four times and I am still not clear about it.

Sorry Rachel.

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I don't think the jury members will live long enough to reach any sound verdict.

In general we'll continue to generalise about gender generalities............. or gender blenders seeking gender menders

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Originally Posted by Nikkilovesdresses

I disagree. .

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I disagree with some of your assertions, and feel that others are an elaboration on my contentions. I stated that "Clothing standards are socially determined and are in a state of constant change." You became specific and stated that "Female underwear is very different to male for entirely physical reasons". Naturally, clothing is based on physical, functional, climatic and other considerations, but within those limitations it is mostly social factors that determine the nature and style of clothing. At that point I made no mention of peer pressure.

In your second paragraph you elaborate about how people's clothing choices have changed. I merely said that the standards "are in a state of constant change".

Your second disagreement, which was with my viewpoints about male and female thought patterns, was the most perplexing. Are you implying that both men and women are in a constant state of searching for a mate, and that this is the basis of our clothing standards? It is more often said that women dress to impress other women rather than to impress men. Also, historically there have been periods when men's clothing was quite frilly and ornate, while at times women's styles have been very frumpish. I believe that these are all stages in the evolution of clothing styles from the fig leaf to today, and that the changes have all reflected the needs and moods of the society of the day.

Finally, I summed with my views about thought patterns as opposed to peer pressure, and how this differed between men and women. You mentioned the hooker of a century ago, and stated that peer pressure had nothing to do with her clothing. But it did. The pressure from other hookers, just as other women were under the peer pressure from all the other women in society.

Thank you for your thoughts on my reply. They made me review what I wrote and also consider whether either of us had strayed from the theme of the original post. On that last point I can only say maybe.

Veronica

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Originally Posted by Nikkilovesdresses

I believe that hetero females dress, when conditions permit, to attract a male.

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I can't tell women what they're feeling / thinking, but I can say that there's a lot of testimony out there from women who say they dress to please themselves. That actually makes a lot of sense to me since making yourself happy automatically makes you attractive to others. The good thing about this view is that it then works for everyone regardless of sex, gender or sexual orientation and doesn't require hidden motives

Everybody loves to have an opinion. I care as much about an opinion on this as I do about what I wear- meaning not much. My concessions to actively courting a male were always limited to choosing one of the newer turtle necks or blue jeans in my closet. I am one who chooses a uniform and sticks with it to avoid losing time making decisions.

Now here is the fun stuff- The earliest article of female clothing ever discovered was a string skirt trapped in a peat bog about 10,000 years ago in northern Europe when neither gender wore much of anything for clothing. The anthropologist concluded that women got the idea of knotting a shiny bit of shell or stone in a bit of cord, then tying those to a cord around the waste. The swaying shells, at hip level, would attract they eye. My questions would be: How does the anthropologist know this was made and worn by a female?:battingeyelashes:

I heard it described once that gender is more of a continuum than it is a black and white construction. It's a series of minute differences between two opposite poles. When you begin to think of it this way, you begin to see that masculine and feminine are not the end all be all, but purely a measurement tool for establishing cultural/social norms. Gender itself is comprised of both the masculine and feminine and it is rare to find anyone at either pole of the gender spectrum.

A male child is born and is a perfect physically complete boy. Throughout the early years he is dressed in boy clothes and given boy toys. Yet he knows he is a girl. Isn't his brain telling him this? Doesn't he have a female brain? If so, how can male and female brains be the same? No physical differences, you say? Is the brain only cells, or does the brain include what's in it? Or do you call that the mind, and the brain just the physical?

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Originally Posted by Confucius

Some areas of the brain certainly are similar between the genders, but what about the neural networks on how the genders approach problems. <snip>I do not think the final verdict has been determined, yet.

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Actually, it has. Because you can find all types of examples of each variation in brain structure, in both sexes. So that there isn't anything that's definitely 'purely male' about one brain or 'purely female' about another. Not to mention, your brain does not stop changing at any point in your life. Otherwise, you could never learn anything new, or experience anything new. Them electrons keep moving around and around........

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Originally Posted by NicoleScott

A male child is born and is a perfect physically complete boy. Throughout the early years he is dressed in boy clothes and given boy toys. Yet he knows he is a girl. Isn't his brain telling him this? Doesn't he have a female brain? If so, how can male and female brains be the same? No physical differences, you say? Is the brain only cells, or does the brain include what's in it? Or do you call that the mind, and the brain just the physical?

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A very succinct statement of the issue. I've written at length in a similar thread that we might view the physical brain (flesh and blood) as analogous to the hardware of a computer, and the consciousness with which we live and learn as analogous to applications software, and the primary neural "wiring" of the brain cells in various areas of the physical brain (responsible for, e.g., emotions) as a kind of firmware, instructions that facilitate consciousness without our being aware of their actions and operations.

At my advanced age, having dealt with this since early childhood and gone so far as to live through an eight-year full-time experiment, I am absolutely convinced that there is something different in the brains of crossdressers, homosexuals, and their fellow variants that make us this way. If it was in the software developed by nurture, it wouldn't be so stubbornly resistant to change, and looking at gross brain structure doesn't show us the details of the neural roadmap. The rainbow of different manifestations? There are millions of neural connections, and, accordingly, many millions of ways they might have been connected abnormally during gestation and early development.

Absolutely, something in our brains tells us to do this. That some of us stare it down early and others deny and delay for decades is quite another matter.

From a medical standpoint, I've seen brains, I've held brains, I've dissected brains. True, if I had one brain and then another, I could not tell by just looking whether it is male or female any more than I could tell a male vs. female heart, liver, spleen and who knows what. But that is not the issue. Even in MRI studies which have demonstrated certain subtle changes in the brains of males vs. females in some of the deeper nuclei in regards to size and shape, what does that mean? Because it is different what is the significance? Well....Its all about function. Therefore, the keys are more in areas looking at function rather than structure. That's why studies involving EEG (to a lesser extent) and even more so looking at PET scans or other radionucleotide studies relying upon uptake by functional activity, which are more involved with evaluation of metabolic activity, seem to hold more answers which some studies have suggested and that they may correlate size differences (MRI) with changes in function (PET). Some studies have suggested that in males with gender identity issues, their PET scans in many cases were closer to the PET scans in female brains suggesting that some of those areas with minor structural changes have altered metabolic activity, indicating a change in function, more closely resembling female brains. Is this the result of hormonal influences in utero.....possibly. I can't say that this is proof positive, nor can I say that this is always the case. But it is a start.

But then on the other hand, does it make much of a difference? In my case, I think it helped me a few years ago after years of soul searching and questioning who I am, to understand myself more and accept who I am. But now, it makes no difference to me and is more of an area of interest because I know who and what I am and don't need to explain it one way or the other. I think those outside medicine may in some cases look at science and medicine differently than those of us who have been intimately involved. Believe it or not, Medicine is an imperfect science, always changing, always evolving, always exploring and rarely a slam dunk in anything. I know that what I learned 40 years ago, much of it is obsolete now. But rather than downplay medicine and science for its imperfections, we are here today because of what we knew 40 years ago which gave us a basis to grow upon. Chances are, that there are multiple factors that make us who we are and we will not always be the same. The nature vs. nurture argument. But I don't think that we should discount what science and medicine suggests and solely replace it with here say and guesses. You can believe what you want which is perfectly fine.....nobody is going to be hurt because one thinks differently. We all have different agendas. Our opinions vary. But in the end, I'm still placing my money on science and medicine.
Peace to all.
Dr. J.