The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

[flintlock]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Men don't ask for directions because directions requires having to recall a conversation. I can't stand tat crap either. Men do look for maps all the time, and since they have used land marks for eons, maps are more to that strength. On the frontier , no one had any directions. So it was up to keep track of land marks visually.

I do service calls for a living and have to take down addresses over the phone and find homes several times a day. The women will often try and give me directions while the men just give me what I asked for, which is the address. Even after I explain I use a GPS the women still try to give me directions. Funny.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

shiny!, this study doesn't really support these conclusions about pronounced gender differences anyway. It's mostly people reading their existing gender biases into the interpretation of the data.

In an larger earlier study (from which the participants of the PNAS study were a subset), the same research team compellingly demonstrated that the sex differences in the psychological skills they measured – executive control, memory, reasoning, spatial processing, sensorimotor skills, and social cognition – are almost all trivially small.

Biological sex is a dismal guide to psychological ability. To give a sense of the huge overlap in behaviour between males and females, of the twenty-six possible comparisons, eleven sex differences were either non-existent, or so small that if you were to select a boy and girl at random and compare their scores on a task, the “right” sex would be superior less than 53% of the time.

Even the much-vaunted female advantage in social cognition, and male advantage in spatial processing, was so modest that a randomly chosen boy would outscore a randomly chosen girl on social cognition – and the girl would outscore the boy on spatial processing – over 40% of the time.

As for map-reading and remembering conversations, these weren’t measured at all.

The 10% gender discrepancy that apparently exists for some types of tasks doesn't seem large enough to me to account for our perceptions of "how men are" or "how women are". I mean, if we're randomly selecting two people to test for these mental skills and gender has at most a 10% impact on the probability person A will be better than person B at a task, it's not really a category-defining trait. (And this isn't the case where all men are 10% better than all women at a given task, or vice-versa; these are two interpenetrating distributions of ability that are shifted relative to each other.) For that matter, we tend to get better at the things we practice, and our brains do tend to adapt... it's unclear whether the differences in connectivity that were found are cause or effect. But it seems to me that the gender differences people believe to exist are a good deal more pronounced than the gender differences that can be objectively measured. It's just that with a particular stereotype in mind, we confirm our biases and tend to interpret any specific observation that happens to align with the stereotype as being caused by that stereotype. To give an example, if I was gay and noted my significant other was better at reading maps than me, I would still rule out gender as a possible explanation because we'd both be male (presuming we're both 'average' guys, it would be a coin flip). On the other hand, if I notice I'm better at reading maps than my wife, I'm tempted to conclude that's because of our respective genders when in fact it's still mostly chance (again, if I'm a hypothetical "randomly selected dude", there's only a 60-40 chance I'd perform better than a girl). And then when it comes to forums like this, there are (I think) other selective factors. Y'all are smart. Thus, you are good at doing things, and you're most likely decent even at the things you aren't especially good at doing. So you're not randomly-selected men or women; you're people who were "iTulip-selected". Depending upon how you selected your points of gender comparison, you might mistakenly attribute to gender differences relative results that actually originate from more general differences in ability. Keep in mind that these distributions of ability across each gender population are a lot wider than the relative shift between the distributions for the two genders, so there are plenty of opportunities to notice "I am good/bad at X" because there are billions of people of widely varying ability at X. The actual cause of that random variation comes down to a complex of factors, each with a small cumulative impact, but if you have in your head a particular bias, then you're likely to attribute all of the cause of your goodness or badness to that particular factor, even when that factor's influence was in fact marginal.

Ash, whats the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees?

Its less than 2%.

At these minute genetic levels a small difference of .001% has extremely large implications for everything that a human can do or not do.

[gwynedd1]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Ash, whats the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees?

Its less than 2%.

At these minute genetic levels a small difference of .001% has extremely large implications for everything that a human can do or not do.

Wow, I hardly even need to be here. Indeed, the result is determined at the margins, the ole 100th step on a 99 step pier.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Wow, I hardly even need to be here. Indeed, the result is determined at the margins, the ole 100th step on a 99 step pier.

[ASH]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Ash, whats the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees?

Its less than 2%.

At these minute genetic levels a small difference of .001% has extremely large implications for everything that a human can do or not do.

I think you are conflating a difference in causative factors with a difference in outcome. You're right that a difference in just a single gene out of tens of thousands can result in a huge difference in developmental outcome: the average woman runs a 12.4% risk of developing breast cancer sometime during her life, but mutation of a single gene (BRCA1) raises the risk to approximately 80%. But we're not talking about a 10% change in some causative factor like genetics; we're talking about a 10% change in the frequency of an outcome after all causative factors, including genetics, have played out. The apt comparison would not be to the Chimpanzee's genome, but to the Chimpanzee's actual measured cognitive ability (or whatever).

Another point I'd like to stress is that whereas marginal advantages decide contests, the gender distributions overlap so much that such contests for marginal advantage are close everywhere except for the tails of the ability curves. That's what it means when the less-adept gender for a particular type of task outperforms the more-adept gender 4 times out of 10. Only some tasks depend upon performance at the tails of the curve. If we're talking about how many people of each gender win Fields medals or write best-selling novels, then we get interested about how the tails of the two distributions might be shifted relative to each other. But as long as we're talking about reading maps or threading needles or remembering conversations, we're not talking about the tails of the curve, and a 10% advantage doesn't amount to much. Again, it doesn't mean all women are 10% better at social tasks than all men; it means a randomly-selected woman has a 60% chance of marginally outperforming a randomly-selected man, but a 40% chance of marginally under-performing him.

[vinoveri]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Agree that the "science" related to this study is questionable, and it does come down to what you measure and how you measure, and am not clear as to the point of the study in the first place.

Off the topic a bit but ...
There seems to be a meme arising of supporting the justice of gender neutrality, to the point of absurdity, e.g., "man and women are the same" sort of nonsense.
We are getting to the point where pseudo-science and whatever the current in-fashion socially and politically correct point of view on social issues broadcast repeatedly via bull horn overtly violates common sense knowledge.

Equal protection, justice, opportunity for all (gender neutral for example) is a laudable goal that we should strive for. Pushing the idea (or beginning with the hypothesis) that men and women are "equivalent", save for some superficial anatomical differences is folly.

[ASH]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Agree that the "science" related to this study is questionable, and it does come down to what you measure and how you measure, and am not clear as to the point of the study in the first place.

Off the topic a bit but ...
There seems to be a meme arising of supporting the justice of gender neutrality, to the point of absurdity, e.g., "man and women are the same" sort of nonsense.
We are getting to the point where pseudo-science and whatever the current in-fashion socially and politically correct point of view on social issues broadcast repeatedly via bull horn overtly violates common sense knowledge.

Equal protection, justice, opportunity for all (gender neutral for example) is a laudable goal that we should strive for. Pushing the idea (or beginning with the hypothesis) that men and women are "equivalent", save for some superficial anatomical differences is folly.

Agreed. I'd say that there's some interesting action right now at the intersection of equality of opportunity and the reality of ability distributions that overlap, but not at the tails. The example that comes to mind is the recent graduation of 3 female boots from the Marine Corps Infantry Training Battalion (ITB) course for enlisted infantrymen. That's the more challenging 9-week course that Marine grunts complete after boot camp in order to earn their 03xx MOS; I went through the much easier 4-week course at the Marine Combat Training (MCT) Battalion before going on to another 8 weeks of training for my MOS (artillery scout-observer). Anyway, for this particular ITB class, 15 women and 266 men started and 3 women (plus a fourth who will probably finish after healing from a stress fracture) and 221 men graduated. So counting the fourth female Marine as a probable, that's about 73% attrition for the women and 17% for the men, out of an (albeit small) sample set that was self-selected for superior motivation and hardiness. The gender essentialists are dumb to say that no woman could do it physically but the commentators who think there are no valid practical concerns (i.e. that the objections are only rationalizations of outdated chauvinism) have it wrong as well. I think the potential problems are probably along the lines of cost-benefit (grunts need to be mass-produced, and the class attrition rate can't be 73%), and good order and discipline. As a matter of principle, it's just to let objective standards of performance determine who can and cannot do a job; as a matter of efficiency, enforcing the principle could eat up a lot of dollars and time that otherwise would go to killing bad guys (or, at any rate, recalcitrant people). Then again, if the military was only about cost efficiency, there wouldn't be military bands. Some grunts think they should just be left alone to do the job society wants them to do, according to their traditions, institutional culture, and professional methods. But the big game is that society provides the defense spending and recruits who are necessary to sustain the institution, and from military parades to iconic battlefield photographs to automotive flag decals, public relations has always been a significant concern of the military and the Marine Corps. In the long game, the military cannot afford to become alienated from the society it serves and which sustains it, and for this reason, it makes sense to spend money and time on matters of principle that matter to the rest of society. It's obviously incorrect to pretend that gender isn't a predictive factor for things like upper body strength and some types of physical durability -- or the social or spatial skills mentioned here -- but on the subject of mental skills, we should bear in mind that the measured difference in areas of apparent gender specialization aren't that pronounced.

[vinoveri]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

Agreed. I'd say that there's some interesting action right now at the intersection of equality of opportunity and the reality of ability distributions that overlap, but not at the tails. The example that comes to mind is the recent graduation of 3 female boots from the Marine Corps Infantry Training Battalion (ITB) course for enlisted infantrymen. That's the more challenging 9-week course that Marine grunts complete after boot camp in order to earn their 03xx MOS; I went through the much easier 4-week course at the Marine Combat Training (MCT) Battalion before going on to another 8 weeks of training for my MOS (artillery scout-observer). Anyway, for this particular ITB class, 15 women and 266 men started and 3 women (plus a fourth who will probably finish after healing from a stress fracture) and 221 men graduated. So counting the fourth female Marine as a probable, that's about 73% attrition for the women and 17% for the men, out of an (albeit small) sample set that was self-selected for superior motivation and hardiness. The gender essentialists are dumb to say that no woman could do it physically but the commentators who think there are no valid practical concerns (i.e. that the objections are only rationalizations of outdated chauvinism) have it wrong as well. I think the potential problems are probably along the lines of cost-benefit (grunts need to be mass-produced, and the class attrition rate can't be 73%), and good order and discipline. As a matter of principle, it's just to let objective standards of performance determine who can and cannot do a job; as a matter of efficiency, enforcing the principle could eat up a lot of dollars and time that otherwise would go to killing bad guys (or, at any rate, recalcitrant people). Then again, if the military was only about cost efficiency, there wouldn't be military bands. Some grunts think they should just be left alone to do the job society wants them to do, according to their traditions, institutional culture, and professional methods. But the big game is that society provides the defense spending and recruits who are necessary to sustain the institution, and from military parades to iconic battlefield photographs to automotive flag decals, public relations has always been a significant concern of the military and the Marine Corps. In the long game, the military cannot afford to become alienated from the society it serves and which sustains it, and for this reason, it makes sense to spend money and time on matters of principle that matter to the rest of society. It's obviously incorrect to pretend that gender isn't a predictive factor for things like upper body strength and some types of physical durability -- or the social or spatial skills mentioned here -- but on the subject of mental skills, we should bear in mind that the measured difference in areas of apparent gender specialization aren't that pronounced.

Agreed.

By the way, is recalcitrance a term of art in formulation of rules of engagement? The above reference made me LOL; thanks, needed that.

[BadJuju]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

I wonder what the brain is like if you are a male that wants to be a female.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

I think you are conflating a difference in causative factors with a difference in outcome. You're right that a difference in just a single gene out of tens of thousands can result in a huge difference in developmental outcome: the average woman runs a 12.4% risk of developing breast cancer sometime during her life, but mutation of a single gene (BRCA1) raises the risk to approximately 80%. But we're not talking about a 10% change in some causative factor like genetics; we're talking about a 10% change in the frequency of an outcome after all causative factors, including genetics, have played out. The apt comparison would not be to the Chimpanzee's genome, but to the Chimpanzee's actual measured cognitive ability (or whatever).

Another point I'd like to stress is that whereas marginal advantages decide contests, the gender distributions overlap so much that such contests for marginal advantage are close everywhere except for the tails of the ability curves. That's what it means when the less-adept gender for a particular type of task outperforms the more-adept gender 4 times out of 10. Only some tasks depend upon performance at the tails of the curve. If we're talking about how many people of each gender win Fields medals or write best-selling novels, then we get interested about how the tails of the two distributions might be shifted relative to each other. But as long as we're talking about reading maps or threading needles or remembering conversations, we're not talking about the tails of the curve, and a 10% advantage doesn't amount to much. Again, it doesn't mean all women are 10% better at social tasks than all men; it means a randomly-selected woman has a 60% chance of marginally outperforming a randomly-selected man, but a 40% chance of marginally under-performing him.

I can agree somewhat with this.

But it is everyone's experience that women and men are different, as well as the so called races but most for PC reasons dont admit it.

I assume there is a reason why you dont see many female fighter pilots or airline pilots and definitely reasons why you dont see many female firefighters.

It cant all be "prejudice" or "institutional discrimination/racism" etc.

[Forrest]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

I wonder what the brain is like if you are a male that wants to be a female.

Excessively confused.

[Forrest]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

I can agree somewhat with this.

But it is everyone's experience that women and men are different, as well as the so called races but most for PC reasons dont admit it.

I assume there is a reason why you dont see many female fighter pilots or airline pilots and definitely reasons why you dont see many female firefighters.

It cant all be "prejudice" or "institutional discrimination/racism" etc.

Gender bias aside, even the most Feminist of women have to admit to survival-of-the-species mechanisms that were designed into us, male and female both. You can knock out culture biases with a lot of effort, but you cannot get rid of genetic patterning that limits non-survival focusing.

You will have all possibilities within both genders. Cultural constraints aside, along with equal access, equal opportunity and equal education, we will find not only some of each sex doing just about anything, but a good percentage of both genders following the genetic parameters that created the cultural norms we fight against.

Gender and culture aside, genetic concentration of specific traits has divided humankind into what we call races, primarily through isolation and inbreeding; secondarily by climate adaptive preference.

Genetic heritage is primary in what we are able to do if there are no other constraints. Gender and acculturation to gender based roles automatically provide those constraints.

[Morgasbord]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

But it is everyone's experience that women and men are different, as well as the so called races but most for PC reasons dont admit it.
I assume there is a reason why you dont see many female fighter pilots or airline pilots and definitely reasons why you dont see many female firefighters.
It cant all be "prejudice" or "institutional discrimination/racism" etc.

Probably because they grew up in an environment that reinforced over and over and over that it wasn't something they should do. If you read further into neuroscience stuff, a lot of these brain differences come down to repeated patterns of behavior. The brain is highly plastic, and structurally changes based on the social environment. So if the brain is placed in a social environment were certain behaviors are encouraged and others discouraged, the brain actually starts to show differences. Is this true *all* the time? Maybe? How can you honestly know? Humans are never divorced from social influence. I think the study of epigenetics (the study of how genes are turned on/off by their environment) combined with the concept of brain plasticity is probably closest to the mark in how these brain things play out.

A depressed person has a brain that shows marked differences because they've been repeating the same negative thought patterns over and over and over. Like walking in a circle and wearing away the floor to form a channel. Teach that person to meditate for 8 weeks straight (because 8 weeks is relevant to the way brain cells turn over), and the brain pattern fades.

Give a math test to boys and girls, they tend to do similarly. Subconsciously prime the girls first with stereotypes that 'girls are bad at math', what happens? Shocking! They do worse.

This work demonstrates the powerful influence of sociocultural stereotypes on individual performance. In the present study, participants were not explicitly primed with stereotype content, but simply had a sociocultural category to which they belong subtly activated. Perhaps, most significant, we find evidence that when an identity is made salient at an implicit level, performance can be facilitated as well as debilitated. Previous work has shown that the performance of women on quantitative tasks is impeded when they are told that the task generally showed gender differences but not when they are told that the task was insensitive to gender differences (Aronson, Quinn & Spencer, in press; Steele, 1997). The present research indicates that women’s quantitative performance can be affected both positively as well as negatively without any explicit instructions. While it remains disturbing that implicitly activating a female gender identity can inhibit performance, it is encouraging that implicitly activating certain ethnic identities can help some individuals perform.

Do you think these social forces, repeated over and over, might have something to do with these brain differences? We look to justifications of culture to arise from the brain, but it seems it's the other way around, or at least a two way street.

I wonder what the brain is like if you are a male that wants to be a female.

Excessively confused.

Or maybe just part of normal human variation going back several millennia across most cultures that has been systematically erased and suppressed. Or maybe it even has has something to do with increasingly documented cases cases of these same sorts of brain differences that everyone is obsessed with.

[don]

Re: The Hardwired Difference Between Male and Female Brains

on the other hand . . .

Why it's time for brain science to ditch the 'Venus and Mars' cliche

Reports trumpeting basic differences between male and female brains are biological determinism at its most trivial, says the science writer of the year

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer,

Saturday 7 December 2013 14.00 EST


There is little evidence to suggest differences between male and female brains are caused by anything other than cultural factors. Photograph: Alamy

As hardy perennials go, there is little to beat that science hacks' favourite: the hard-wiring of male and female brains. For more than 30 years, I have seen a stream of tales about gender differences in brain structure under headlines that assure me that from birth men are innately more rational and better at map-reading than women, who are emotional, empathetic multi-taskers, useless at telling jokes. I am from Mars, apparently, while the ladies in my life are from Venus.

And there are no signs that this flow is drying up, with last week witnessing publication of a particularly lurid example of the genre. Writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia revealed they had used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging to show that the neurons in men's brains are connected to each other in a very different way from neurons in women's brains.

This point was even illustrated by the team, led by Professor Ragini Verma, with a helpful diagram. A male brain was depicted with its main connections – coloured blue, needless to say – running from the front to the back. Connections within cranial hemispheres were strong, but connections between the two hemispheres were weak. By contrast, the female brain had thick connections running from side to side with strong links between the two hemispheres.



A photo issued by University of Pennsylvania researchers showing intra-hemispheric connections (blue) and inter- hemispheric connections (orange) in men's and women's brains. Male top row, female bottom row. Photograph: National Academy Of Sciences/PA "These maps show us a stark difference in the architecture of the human brain that helps provide a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks and women at others," said Verma.

The response of the press was predictable. Once again scientists had "proved" that from birth men have brains which are hardwired to give us better spatial skills, to leave us bereft of empathy for others, and to make us run, like mascara, at the first hint of emotion. Equally, the team had provided an explanation for the "fact" that women cannot use corkscrews or park cars but can remember names and faces better than males. It is all written in our neurons at birth.

As I have said, I have read this sort of thing before. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now. It is biological determinism at its silly, trivial worst. Yes, men and women probably do have differently wired brains, but there is little convincing evidence to suggest these variations are caused by anything other than cultural factors. Males develop improved spatial skills not because of an innate superiority but because they are expected and encouraged to be strong at sport, which requires expertise at catching and throwing. Similarly, it is anticipated that girls will be more emotional and talkative, and so their verbal skills are emphasised by teachers and parents. As the years pass, these different lifestyles produce variations in brain wiring – which is a lot more plastic than most biological determinists realise. This possibility was simply not addressed by Verma and her team.

Equally, when gender differences are uncovered by researchers they are frequently found to be trivial, a point made by Robert Plomin, a professor of behavioural genetics at London's Institute of Psychiatry, whose studies have found that a mere 3% of the variation in young children's verbal development is due to their gender. "If you map the distribution of scores for verbal skills of boys and of girls, you get two graphs that overlap so much you would need a very fine pencil indeed to show the difference between them. Yet people ignore this huge similarity between boys and girls and instead exaggerate wildly the tiny difference between them. It drives me wild."

I should make it clear that Plomin made that remark three years ago when I last wrote about the issue of gender and brain wiring. It was not my first incursion, I should stress. Indeed, I have returned to the subject – which is an intriguing, important one – on a number of occasions over the years as neurological studies have been hyped in the media, often by the scientists who carried them out. It has taken a great deal of effort by other researchers to put the issue in proper perspective.

A major problem is the lack of consistent work in the field, a point stressed to me in 2005 – during an earlier outbreak of brain-gender difference stories – by Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London, and author of Y: The Descent of Men. "Researching my book, I discovered there was no consensus at all about the science [of gender and brain structure]," he told me. "There were studies that said completely contradictory things about male and female brains. That means you can pick whatever study you like and build a thesis around it. The whole field is like that. It is very subjective. That doesn't mean there are no differences between the brains of the sexes, but we should take care not to exaggerate them."

Needless to say that is not what has happened over the years. Indeed, this has become a topic whose coverage has been typified mainly by flaky claims, wild hyperbole and sexism. It is all very depressing. The question is: why has this happened? Why is there such divergence in explanations for the differences in mental abilities that we observe in men and women? And why do so many people want to exaggerate them so badly?

The first issue is the easier to answer. The field suffers because it is bedevilled by its extraordinary complexity. The human brain is a vast, convoluted edifice and scientists are only now beginning to develop adequate tools to explore it. The use of diffusion tensor imaging by Verma's team was an important breakthrough, it should be noted. The trouble is, once more, those involved were rash in their interpretations of their own work.

"This study contains some important data but it has been badly overhyped and the authors must take some of the blame," says Professor Dorothy Bishop, of Oxford University. "They talk as if there is a typical male and a typical female brain – they even provide a diagram – but they ignore the fact that there is a great deal of variation within the sexes in terms of brain structure. You simply cannot say there is a male brain and a female brain."

Even more critical is Marco Catani, of London's Institute of Psychiatry. "The study's main conclusions about possible cognitive differences between males and females are not supported by the findings of the study. A link between anatomical differences and cognitive functions should be demonstrated and the authors have not done so. They simply have no idea of how these differences in anatomy translate into cognitive attitudes. So the main conclusion of the study is purely speculative."

The study is also unclear how differences in brain architecture between the sexes arose in the first place, a point raised by Michael Bloomfield of the MRC's Clinical Science Centre. "An obvious possibility is that male hormones like testosterone and female hormones like oestrogen have different effects on the brain. A more subtle possibility is that bringing a child up in a particular gender could affect how our brains are wired."

In fact, Verma's results showed that the neuronal connectivity differences between the sexes increased with the age of her subjects. Such a finding is entirely consistent with the idea that cultural factors are driving changes in the brain's wiring. The longer we live, the more our intellectual biases are exaggerated and intensified by our culture, with cumulative effects on our neurons. In other words, the intellectual differences we observe between the sexes are not the result of different genetic birthrights but are a consequence of what we expect a boy or a girl to be.

Why so many people should be so desperate to ignore or obscure this fact is a very different issue. In the end, I suspect it depends on whether you believe our fates are sealed at birth or if you think that it is a key part of human nature to be able to display a plasticity in behaviour and in ways of thinking in the face of altered circumstance. My money is very much on the latter.

WHAT THE NEW STUDY SHOWS


In their study, Verma and her colleagues, investigated the gender differences in brain connectivity in 949 individuals - 521 females and 428 males - aged between eight and 22 years. The technique they used is known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a water-based imaging technology that can trace and highlight the fibre pathways that connect the different regions of the brain, laying the foundation for a structural connectome or network of the whole brain. These studies revealed a typical pattern, claim Verma and her team: men had stronger links between neurons within their cranial hemispheres while women had stronger links between the two hemispheres, a difference that the scientists claimed was crucial in explaining difference in the behaviour of men and women.

But the technique has been criticised. "DTI provides only indirect measures of structural connectivity and is, therefore, different from the well validated microscopic techniques that show the real anatomy of axonal connections," says Marco Catani, of London's Institute of Psychiatry. "Images of the brain derived from diffusion tensor MRI should not be equated to real connections and results should always be interpreted with extreme caution."This point is backed by Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg, of Oxford University, who attacked the idea that brain connections should be considered as hard-wired.

"Connections can change throughout life, in response to experience and learning. As far as I can tell, the authors have not directly related these differences in brain connections to differences in behaviour. It is a huge leap to extrapolate from anatomical differences to try to explain behavioural variation between the sexes. The brain regions that have been highlighted are involved in many different functions."