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October 19, 2007
POPTech: Not Just Mars and Venus
Louann Brizendine, M.D., a neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, is the founder of the Women’s and Teen Girls’ Mood and Hormone Clinic. Her message to us is that there is no such thing as the unisex brain, and that because of this there are new understandings about how men and women think,feel, and act as a result of our physiology.
While all brains in the womb start out as female, after about 8 weeks males testes releases surges of testosterone that bathe the brain and dramatically alter its development. Similarly, female brains are awashed in progesterone and estrogen, shifting their direction in powerful ways. Many of these shifts start in the womb, but continue long after birth, and especially during puberty when girls and boys experience dramatic physical changes.
Brizendine put up a slide describing the age window of 10-15, and I found myself noting that my daughter Tara is fifteen, and my son David is eleven - right in that window. I was struck that the hormonal factors Brizendine was describing dramatic affect growth of different areas of the brain and the wiring of its synapses. For example, in boys, the amygdula -- a pear-shaped clump of tissue above the brain stem -- is significantly larger in boys. It reacts quickly to perceived threats as though tigers are indeed in our midst, setting off the fight-or-flight response that triggers the release of adrenaline and other hormones into the bloodstream. (That helps us also understand the men who rushed in to save those in the burning towers during 9/11 - even though they were not related.)
Females on the other hand, have high amounts of oxytocin, “the pair-bonding molecule.” Females experience this starting from menses. Women's brains as a result are generally better at emotional detail and non-verbal communication. (But these are not absolute. My son seems to have high emotional richness in his communication, and a high degree of empathy - traits that can easily be present in males. He'll be a real catch for a lucky girl someday... At the same time, many females have positive traits frequently attributed to males. Both my daughter and her mom are simply amazing at math.)
But these kinds of conversations are always risky - witness the end of Lawrence Summers tenure as president of Harvard when he attributed women's lesser involvement in math and science fields as being related to gender differences. Louann also takes chances here by using satirical slides where SEX on the brain is spelled out in huge letters, referring to the notion that testosterone makes the area that processes sexual desire twice as large in males. She also teased women showing areas of the female brain having large sections devoted to shopping and jealousy. Maybe it's all in the spirit of levity and fun. But I think the important thing is to be mindful of potential reductionism by this theory. It's easy to fall into a rabbit hole where gender differences can be expressed as either/or or better than/less than, illustrating a tension between man and women.
But Louann closes on a very inspirational and positive note. She explains that in 1900, women averaged 14-15 pregnancies and 10 childbirths. The average lifespan was 39 or 40 years old. Today, 50% of the smartest people in the world are women, and lifespans are 30-40 years beyond childbearing years, and that they have control over their fertility [in many parts of the world]. Louann says that both men and women can combine their collective intellectual capital to solve the problems that humanity faces, end war, foster kindness, and make the world a better place.
Posted by Mike at October 19, 2007 12:06 PM
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