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Andy’s Quick Hits (149): So Men and Women Do Have Different Brains!
Isn’t this obvious?
No, not at all — colloquially and stereotypically we tend to think, joke, believe, that men’s and women’s brains are different. But a lot of the research is unclear and shaky!
How so?
Well, one is the limitation of technology — for example, brain scanning with imaging (when you see pretty blobs) is inaccurate at micro levels — and sample sizes, the amount of people scanned, is very small. Add to that that the measured differences are very small: a 5% shift in one direction or another. So, until now, we have some indication of differences but we couldn’t tell what is really a difference in male or female. And some of these are only in limited regions or areas of the brain.
And you say this is now proven!
Well, proven is another thing, but a study hot of the presses has taken a different approach and measured gene activation in the brains of male and female mice and across the estrous cycle in female mice.
And what did they find?
They found more than 1'000 genes that activate differently in one sex or the other. Then using these genes as entry points they were able to identify groups of neurons that guide sex typical behaviours. This also in combination with 600 genes that activate at…
