Are Male And Female BRAINS Different? | Earth Science

Our brain is the route of our consciousness, reasoning and personality but is there a difference between a male and female brain?

Humans are subject to cultural conditioning based on societal gender norms. Growing up with these norms does shape a persons behaviour, making it hard to align the differences with hard wired differences in the brain. To really take a closer look at this topic, scientists have started to look at the brain structure and the result are fascinating.

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[michaelsteffensen]

Saying it's wrong to generalize humans into two gender categories is like saying it's wrong to make any other reasonable generalization like humans have two arms and two legs or humans have 10 fingers.

Yes I do realize there are chromosomal disorders that can blur the lines between sex to the point where it's actually quite difficult to determine whether a sufferer is male or female, but these conditions are very rare. As for people who claim to feel like the opposite sex, that doesn't change the fact they are biologically male or female, their feelings don't change that.

[GenuinelyJake]

Don't worry about triggering snowflakes, Greg. We all know the truth. We are different. Some just don't like to admit it.
Science and biology don't care about hurting someone's feelings. It is what it is.
Politically correct thinking, takes us away from truths.

[erictaylor]

Something kind of mind blowing here I realized when reading about the history of the brain. The Greek physician Gailyn is considered by most to be the first person to discover the purpose of the brain. As Gailyn used his brain to accomplish this, Gailyn's brain was the first thing on Earth to discover what it is.
Think about this. Out of all the objects on earth, alive, dead or non-living, human brains are the only things that actually know what they are.

[mattlm]

Not a single mention of hormones. Also, the fact that men and women tend to have different brain structures is the point. Some individuals may have more traits associated with the opposite sex, but overall there are clear differences. Sometimes you might get a tall woman and a short man, but that doesn't make women taller than men, because on average they aren't. You can't take the exceptions and use those as rules.

[MrAwawe]

It's amazing how difficult it is these days to come out with a simple "yes".

[Mrcrazy]

inb4 this guy gets fired because he made his coworkers feel 'unsafe'

[emilius]

"Countless scientific studies" yet not a single one is citated

[KatanaBart]

This was hard to take. Twenty years ago I started college, and my very first class was psychology -- specifically, "Lifespan Development". One of the first things studied was the physical differences between male and female brains. The corpus callosum (sp?) is larger in females (bundle of nerves connecting the left and right hemispheres). There's a difference in the ratio of white to grey matter (memory vs. processing). There's too many differences in hormones, and the glands that produce them, to go into. Neurons fire to different parts of the brain during certain situations (ex. fires to the amygdala during high stress situation, vs to the adrenal glands in men).

So, this video is some guy with zero knowledge, reading a script written by someone with almost zero knowledge and an agenda to push.

[thearmyofgreatness]

They are different. We should encourage that discussion

[danielsteel]

4:30 "Men's brains tend to be larger, women's tend to have thicker cortexes"
5:00 "If I handed you a brain ... you couldn't tell if it was [one or the other]"

Assuming it's an adult brain, couldn't I guess confidently based on the volume alone?

[unacomn]

My pancreas is male, his name is Stephen, he used to be a golf pro.

[DakuHonoo]

and a scientist with a PhD in sexual neuroscience says : "Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at."

[JohnAnonymous]

No, it doesn’t show that gender is non-binary, it rather suggests that it’s a meaningless concept. We are male or female (or intersex) based on our biology, but when it comes identify everybody is simply unique. You could say there are as many genders as there are people. Well, we already have given labels to that, it’s called having a ‘name’.

[ethancarter]

but surely the MRI scans of male and female brains cant account for the effect of differing hormones, so maybe the fact that biological males and females have differing hormones would account for the differences in behaviour and skill set of the different genders.
would be interesting to see if people who have undergone hormone therapy acquire the skills of the gender they are trying to become?

[veryconfused]

Brain is similar in both male and female with 1% difference and I saw a ted talk (though it is of 8 year old) the speaker in there told that "15 minutes of stress can change the sex of that brain part"
Like we all know by nature the fetus is female but when the Y chromosme comes there is more testosteron made so brain of a boy goes to change like this in the womb.

[Peter_]

YES, men and women are different, and every psychologist in the entire world would agree about that.
The fact that we are different would even help with gender equality, because it would explain why men and women are over-represented in different jobs.

[rachmaninovwasemo]

Just because there might be these differences does not mean they are biological. It would make sense that men would more likely do better at assembling furniture. Why? Because they are the ones more often to do it and also, girl toys are things like dolls and boy toys are things like Legos. These differences are produced by nurture. Much of our brains are developed outside of the womb, therefore, subject to the environment in how they develope.

[kebakent]

There's nothing keeping you from mentioning some of the countless studies, that have large population sizes.

[oceanchong]

This comment section is going to be an absolute shitstorm.

[nightjar]

I once took a test on spatial reasoning and got them all right. I also came up with a unique way to figure out mazes. I like to forget what gender I am. That helps.