This is the familiar “men are rational, women are emotional” stereotype, dressed up in the authority of neuroscience, much to the detriment of workplace and classroom equality. Space will not allow me to expose every claim about male and female brains distorted in popular discourse (but for more on educational misuses, see Eliot, 2011). The good news is that a few scientists have begun publicly checking some of the more outrageous assertions. Writing in his Language Log website (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu),

linguist Bleomycin molecular weight Mark Liberman has deconstructed several of Leonard Sax’s claims about sex differences in hearing and vision. Liberman has also taken on the neurononsense of psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of the highly popular book, The Female Brain, which opens with the bold confabulation ( Brizendine, 2006): The female brain has tremendous unique aptitudes—outstanding verbal agility, the ability to connect deeply in friendship, a nearly psychic capacity to read faces and tone of voice for emotions and states of mind, and the ability to defuse conflict. All of this is hardwired into the brains of women. These are the talents women are born with that many men, frankly,

are not. (p. 8). In short, popular portrayals of sex differences in the brain are riddled with claims that are highly extrapolated, misinterpreted, or just Sorafenib solubility dmso made up but are nonetheless used to justify the differential treatment of boys and girls in school or men and women in the workplace. If educators or corporate consultants extolled similar stories about neural differences between blacks and whites, scientists would be quick to expose their flaws. Somehow, exaggerated claims about sex differences are more culturally acceptable, but the misuse of research to validate stereotypes of any sort

is dangerous, so neuroscientists need to exert more care in presenting the true magnitude and multiple causes of sex differences in the brain and behavior. Facile myths about male-female brain differences are especially disturbing considering the large amount of data now available on the topic. A recent PubMed search for the terms “brain” and “human” and “sex difference” turned up over 5,600 papers. Still, it is surprising how little consensus has Resminostat emerged from this research. A few structural differences between male and female brains have been clearly demonstrated (Cosgrove et al., 2007): males’ brains are about 11% larger than females’ and have a slightly higher proportion of white matter, whereas female brains have a correspondingly larger proportion of gray matter in most cortical areas (contrary to what CBS News has to say!). The difference in brain mass or volume reflects the overall sexual dimorphism between males and females. Adult men are 18% heavier and 9% taller than women, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.