Do you guys think men and women have different brains?

submitted by eddyelric from self.GenderCritical

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[–]BewitchedSam 34 insightful - 1 fun34 insightful - 0 fun35 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I'm a neuropsych major. From what I've learned there is some controversy in the field about this. Some studies have shown that men typically have more grey matter and women have more white matter. However, more recent studies have shown that the distributions overlap and it's not always in predictable ways. There are size differences between male and female brains but research has shown that this corresponds with body sizes. Something to keep in mind is historically brain differences have been used to as a justification for sexism and racism. So I approach such studies with skepticism and try to look for signs of bias on the researchers part.

[–]MezozoicGay 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

From soviet books, I've learned that structural difference there is because in woman head there more different structural parts to control hormones (as their levels and control are much more complex, especially during pregnancy, than men ones). And women themselves are smaller in size on average, and they have different skull structure. So their brains have less space to be placed, and to counter that - their brains have much more grey matter relative to whole mass of brain than man. And on average man and woman of same size should have around same amount of grey matter on average, even thought woman brain will be smaller in size.

I've read some western studies that were proving this point. Or more like, studies were about something else, but experiments proved point I gave above.

Just in addition: Soviet sexism is another topic, and can be very interesting to discuss or study. As everything was made to make "everyone equal" by laws, so technically women here had right to own a land and to vote since 1920 year, however, on practice that almost never ever happened, and no women (except one Lenin friend) were in high levels of power in USSR. So laws and studies by law were equally focused on both sexes, but on practice it was not the case and everything was still heavily aimed on men only.

[–]BewitchedSam 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Very interesting. Based on your comment, I was able to find a study that found that women had more regional GM than men when controlled for brain size. However, most of the articles I've found thus far have suggested women have more WM and men have more GM overall. I also couldn't find anything suggest that the pineal gland was larger in women when controlled for brain size. I'm limited to EBSCO host and Google scholar at the moment and haven't done much digging yet but I'll keep looking.

If sexism and misogyny remained socially acceptable despite the legal equality it's possible these studies could have been influenced by researcher bias.

[–]MezozoicGay 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

could have been influenced by researcher bias.

They could, but for some reason, they are often still "less sexist" than western ones of same time. Most likely because sexism here was based on "classic family values, women and men must do different work" and not on "women are just worse than men".

And do not forget that grey matter can grow in size (or more like in density, not actual square space). So studies during times when women were not allowed to study in universities or to work outside of homes - can actually factually show that women in age of 30-40 had less grey matter, but that was only because they were not allowed to develop, while men were learning whole life. However, I am not sure about this part, as I haven't read any researches for this exact topic about growth, and only saying what we studied in school in USSR.

[–]catawampus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don’t really know anything about this topic, but couldn’t the way we are socialized and respond to our environment affect how our brains develop i.e. neural plasticity?

[–]BewitchedSam 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes our brains change based on our environment and events but this would contribute to individual differences and not average differences between sexes.