Gender has nothing to do with the brain
男性脳と女性脳の違いは誰もが知っています。 おしゃべりで少し神経質ですが、決して忘れず、面倒見が良い性格です。 もう1人は静かですが、より衝動的ですが、仕事を成し遂げるためにゴシップを無視することができます。(English) Everyone knows the difference between male and female brains. One is talkative and a little nervous but never forgets and looks after others. The other is quiet, though more impulsive, but can tune out gossip to get the job done.
Gender has nothing to do with the brain.
By Kazuma Kitamura and Jyn Yashima, "Advanced English Vocabulary Logophilia Deepened in Knowledge and Context."
//Summary -Level-C2//
The study "Dump the Dimorphism" challenges the notion of significant differences between male and female brains, arguing that human brains are not 'sexually dimorphic'. While men's brains are about 11% larger, this is proportional to body size, and no specific brain areas are more prominent in either sex. The study suggests that perceived differences result from size, not sex, and sex is an imprecise indicator of brain type, supporting the experiences of non-binary and transgender individuals.
1)
Everyone knows the difference between male and female brains. One is talkative and a little nervous but never forgets and looks after others. The other is quiet, though more impulsive, but can tune out gossip to get the job done.
2)
These are stereotypes, of course, but they surprisingly influence how current brain research is designed and interpreted. Since the early days of MRI, neuroscientists have worked relentlessly to find differences between men's and women's brains.
This research attracts attention because it's easy to link any particular brain finding to a gender difference in behaviour.
3)
My colleagues and I titled our study "Dump the Dimorphism" to debunk the idea that human brains are "sexually dimorphic". That's a very scientific term that biologists use to describe a structure that exists in two different forms in males and females, such as the antlers of deer or the genitals of men and women.
4)
Regarding the brain, some animals show sexual dimorphism, such as certain birds whose brains contain a courtship song. But as our exhaustive survey shows, nothing in the human brain comes close.
5)
Yes, the overall brain size of men is about 11% larger than women's, but unlike some songbirds, no specific brain areas are disproportionately more prominent in men or women.
Brain size is proportional to body size, and the difference between brain sizes is smaller than that of other internal organs, such as the heart, lungs and kidneys, which are between 17% and 25% larger in males.
6)
When overall size is adequately controlled for, no single brain region differs by more than 1% between men and women, and even these tiny differences are not found consistently across geographically or ethnically diverse populations.
7)
Other much-vaunted sex differences in the brain are also a product of size, not sex. These include the ratio of grey matter to white matter and the ratio of connections between the brain's two hemispheres compared to within the two hemispheres.
Both percentages are more significant in people with smaller brains, male or female.
8)
Furthermore, recent research has thoroughly discredited the idea that the tiny difference in connectivity between the left and right hemispheres explains any behavioural differences between men and women.
9)
Neuroscientists have long hoped that more extensive studies and better methods would finally reveal the "real" or species-wide sex difference in the brain. But the truth is that as the number of studies has increased, the effects of sex have become smaller.
10)
This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias.
Small, early studies that found a significant sex difference were more likely to be published than research that found no difference between male and female brains.
11)
A decade or so ago, teachers were urged to separate boys and girls in maths and English classes because of alleged learning differences between the sexes.
Fortunately, many refused, arguing that the range of ability between boys or girls is always much more significant than between each sex as a group.
In other words, sex is a very imprecise indicator of what kind of brain a person will have.
12)
The absence of binary brain sex features also resonates with the increasing number of people identifying as non-binary, queer, gender non-conforming or transgender.
Whatever the direct impact of biological sex testing on human brain circuitry, it is insufficient to explain the multidimensional behaviours that we lump together under the complex phenomenon of gender.
* While many transgender people strongly identify with one gender, the difference is that nonbinary people do not define their own gender. Queer is a term used to refer to all sexual minorities other than heterosexuals and cisgenders.
13)
The human brain is not 'dimorphic' but an asexually monomorphic organ - much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs.
As you may have noticed, these can be successfully transplanted between women and men.
Gender has nothing to do with the brain
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Meet the neuroscientist shattering the myth of the gendered brain
Why asking whether your brain is male or female is the wrong question
//Summary - Level-C2//
Neuroscientist Gina Rippon debunks the myth of gendered brains in her book, "The Gendered Brain." She argues that there are no significant differences between male and female brains and that the idea of such is harmful and inaccurate. Rippon emphasizes the role of social conditioning and brain plasticity in shaping behaviour and abilities rather than biological sex. She also criticizes the influence of gender stereotypes on brain research, arguing that our brains reflect our experiences, not our sex. The 21st century, she suggests, is challenging not just old answers but the questions we ask about gender and the brain.
A)
1)
You get an invitation emblazoned with the question: "A bouncy little 'he' or a pretty little 'she'?" The question is your teaser for the "gender reveal party" to which you've been invited by an expectant mother who, more than 20 weeks into her pregnancy, knows what you don't: the sex of her child.
When you arrive, cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon explains in her riveting new book The Gendered Brain that the big reveal will be hidden in a novelty item, such as a white-frosted cake, and colour-coded. You'll see either blue or pink filling when cutting the cake. If it is blue, it is...
2)
Yes, you've guessed it. Whatever its gender, this baby's future is predetermined by the belief that men and women do all sorts of things differently, better or worse, because they have different brains.
3)
"Hang on a minute," laughs Rippon, who has been interested in the human brain since childhood, "science has moved on. We're in the 21st century!" Her measured delivery is at odds with the image created by her detractors, who denounce her as a "neuronazi" and a "grumpy old harridan" with an "equality fetish".
I was prepared for an encounter with an egghead who would talk to and about me. Rippon is patient, though there is an urgency in her voice as she explains how important, how life-changing it is that we finally unpack - and discard - the sexist stereotypes and binary codes that limit and harm us.
4)
For Rippon, a twin, the effects of stereotyping began early. Her "underachieving" brother was sent to an academic Catholic boys' boarding school at 11. "It's hard to say. I was bright academically. I was top in the country for the 11+."
5)
This earned her a scholarship to a grammar school. Instead, her parents sent her to a non-academic Catholic convent for girls. The school did not teach science.
Students were trained to be nuns or diplomatic wives and mothers. "Psychology," she says, "was the closest I could get to studying the brain. I didn't have the A-levels to study medicine. I wanted to be a doctor."
B)
6)
A PhD in physiological psychology followed, focusing on brain processes and schizophrenia. Today, the Essex-born scientist is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham. Her brother is an artist.
When she is not in the lab, using cutting-edge brain-imaging techniques to study developmental disorders such as autism, she is out in the world, debunking the "pernicious" myth of sex differences: the idea that you can "sex" a brain or that there are such things as male and female brains.
7)
It is a scientific argument that has gone unchallenged since the 18th century, "when people liked to talk about what men's and women's brains were like - before you could even look at them."
"They devised these excellent ideas and metaphors that suited the status quo and society and led to different education for men and women".
8)
Rippon has been analysing the data on sex differences in the brain. She admits that, like many others, she initially looked for these differences. But she couldn't find any beyond the negligible, and other research began to question the very existence of such differences.
9)
For example, once brain size differences were considered, the "known" sex differences in critical structures disappeared. Then the penny dropped: perhaps it was time to abandon the age-old search for differences between men's and women's brains.
Are there significant differences based on sex alone? The answer, she says, is no. To suggest otherwise is "neuro foolishness".
C)
10)
"The idea of the male and female brains suggests that each is a characteristically homogeneous thing and that if you have a male brain, you will have the same aptitudes, preferences and personalities as everyone else with that 'type' of the brain."
We now know that this is not the case. We are at the point where we have to say: Forget about male and female brains; it's a distraction, it's inaccurate.
It's also potentially harmful because it's used as a hook to say, well, there's no point in girls doing science because they don't have a scientific brain, or boys shouldn't be emotional or want to lead.
11)
The next question was, what is driving the differences in behaviour between girls and boys, men and women? They say our "gendered world" shapes everything from education policy and social hierarchies to relationships, self-identity, well-being and mental health.
If this sounds like a familiar 20th-century argument about social conditioning, it is - except that it is now coupled with knowledge of the brain's plasticity that we have only been aware of for the past 30 years.
12)
"It is now a scientific fact," says Rippon, "that the brain is shaped from birth and continues to be shaped until the 'cognitive cliff' in old age when our grey cells start to disappear.
So out goes the old 'biology is destiny' argument: effectively that you get the brain you're born with - yes, it gets a bit bigger and better connected, but you've got your developmental endpoint, determined by a biological blueprint that unfolds along the way.
13)
With brain plasticity, the brain is much more a function of experience. If you learn a skill, your brain will change and continue to change". This has been shown, for example, in studies of black cab drivers learning to drive.
"The brain waxes and wanes much more than we ever realised. So if you haven't had specific experiences - if you weren't given Lego as a girl, you don't have the same spatial training as others.
14)
But if you were given these spatial tasks repeatedly, you would get better at them. "The neural pathways change; they become automatic pathways. The job does get easier."
D)
15)
Neural plasticity throws the nature/nurture polarity out of the laboratory window. "Nature is intertwined with nature," says Rippon. In addition, "being part of a social, cooperative group is one of the primary drives of our brains".
The brain is also predictive and anticipatory in ways we have never realised. Like a satellite navigation system, it follows the rules and is hungry for them.
16)
"The brain is a rule scavenger," explains Rippon, "and it picks up its rules from the outside world. The rules change how the brain works and how someone behaves. The result of gendered practices? "
The gender gap becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
17)
Rippon regularly speaks at schools. She wants girls to have leading scientists as role models, and she wants all children to know that their identity, abilities, achievements and behaviour are not dictated by their biological sex.
18)
"Gender bombardment" makes us think otherwise. Male babies in blue rompers and female babies in pink is a binary coding that belies a status quo that defies scientific evidence.
"Pinkification, as Rippon calls it, must go. Parents don't always like what they hear."
E)
19)
"They say, 'I have a son and a daughter, and they are different. And I say, 'I have two daughters, and they are very different.'
When discussing male and female identity, people are very wedded to the idea that men and women are different. People like me are not sex-difference deniers," Rippon continues.
20)
"Of course, there are gender differences. Anatomically, men and women are different. The brain is a biological organ. Gender is a biological factor. But it is not the only factor; it intersects with many variables."
21)
I ask her for a comparable turning point in the history of scientific understanding to gauge her significance. "The idea that the Earth goes around the sun," she replies.
22)
Letting go of age-old certainties is frightening, admits Rippon, who is optimistic and fearful about the future. "I'm worried about what the 21st century is doing, the way it's making gender more relevant. We must look at what we put into our children's brains."
23)
Ours may be the age of the self-image, yet we aren't ready to let the individual self emerge, unfettered by cultural expectations of one's biological sex. That disconnect, says Rippon, is writ large, for example, in men.
24)
"It suggests there is something wrong in their self-image." The social brain wants to fit in. The satnav recalibrates according to expectations.
"If they are being driven down a route that leads to self-harm or even suicide or violence, what is taking them there?"
On the plus side, our plastic brains are good learners. All we need to do is change the life lessons.
F)
25)
How have gender stereotypes guided brain research?
Research has failed to challenge deep-seated prejudices, says Gina Rippon.
26)
Several things went wrong in the early days of sex differences and brain imaging research. There was a frustratingly backwards-looking focus on historical beliefs in stereotypes (called "neurosexism" by psychologist Cordelia Fine).
Studies were designed based on a list of "robust" differences between women and men that had been generated over the centuries, or the data were interpreted in terms of stereotypical female/male characteristics that might not even have been measured in the scanner.
27)
If a difference was found, it was much more likely to be published than a finding of no difference, and an enthusiastic media would breathlessly hail it as "the truth at last".
Finally, proof that women are hardwired to be rubbish at map reading and that men can't multi-task!
So the advent of brain imaging at the end of the 20th century has not done much to advance our understanding of the alleged links between sex and the brain. Are we doing any better here in the 21st century?
28)
A significant breakthrough in recent years has been the realisation that our brains continue to change throughout adulthood, not only through the education we receive but also through the jobs we do, the hobbies we have and the sports we play.
29)
The brain of a working London taxi driver will be different from that of a trainee and a retired taxi driver; we can see differences between people who play video games or learn to do origami or play the violin.
30)
What if these brain-altering experiences are different for different people or groups?
If, for example, being male means you have much more understanding in building things or manipulating complex 3D representations (such as playing with Lego), this will likely show up in your brain. Brains reflect the lives they have lived, not just the sex of their owners.
G)
31)
Seeing the life-long impressions made on our plastic brains by the experiences and attitudes they encounter makes us realise that we need to look closely at what is happening outside our heads and inside.
We can no longer cast the sex differences debate as nature versus nurture – we need to acknowledge that the relationship between a brain and its world is not a one-way street but a constant two-way flow of traffic.
32)
Once we acknowledge that our brains are plastic and mouldable, then the power of gender stereotypes becomes evident. If we could follow the brain journey of a baby girl or a baby boy, we could see that right from the moment of birth or even before.
These brains may be set on different roads. Toys, clothes, books, parents, families, teachers, schools, universities, employers, social and cultural norms – and, of course, gender stereotypes – all can signpost different directions for different brains.
33)
They are resolving arguments about differences in brain matter. Understanding where such differences come from is essential for everyone with a brain and sex or gender.
Beliefs about sex differences (even if ill-founded) inform stereotypes, which commonly provide just two labels – girl or boy, female or male – which, in turn, historically carry with them vast amounts of "contents assured" information and save us having to judge each individual on their own merits or idiosyncrasies.
34)
With input from exciting breakthroughs in neuroscience, these labels' neat, binary distinctiveness is being challenged – we are coming to realise that nature is inextricably entangled with nurture. What used to be thought fixed and inevitable is being shown to be plastic and flexible; the powerful biology-changing effects of our physical and social worlds are being revealed.
The 21st century is not just challenging the old answers – it is challenging the question itself.
Attack on Pearl Harbor... Why was Japan's declaration of war delayed?
Showa History Understanding the Truth <<7>> The noble mission of the Japanese who love history (1) The blunder that attacked Pearl Harbor was a "cheating attack."
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