Well very interesting indeed!
That article was written in 1967 do you think the WTS have changed much? Or even kept up with modern thinking on the subject like this article I found on the Internet *ouch* the evil Internet! LOL
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/braingame020731.html The Brain Game What?s Sex Got to Do With It?
July 31 ? If you want a clear illustration of one of the many differences in the ways men and women think, a simple car ride will paint a pretty clear picture.
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Dr. Helen Fisher, an expert in gender differences , says the Boulwares are not unusual in their navigational skills. "Women go from one object to another. ? A man will say, go two miles down the road and then head east. That's very different from saying go down to the shoe store and take a left at the high stone wall."
But these differences begin long before people get their driver's licenses. The Boulwares are already observing major differences in the way their three children communicate, particularly their two eldest ? Jordan, 11, and Jerika, 9.
Lori Boulware says her daughter Jerika describes her day with a lot more drama than her son. "Everything is about relationships," she said. "I know who was whose best friend today and who fought with who and what boy likes who. Jordan has no interest in that kind of stuff at all. Jordan would be happy to just say, 'My day was fine.'"
Do the Boulwares' family stories sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Fact is, men and women are very different in the way they speak, behave, solve problems, and even remember where the car keys are.
Size Isn't Everything
The reasons behind these differences have fueled arguments for generations and continue to do so today. Is it our biology, or our culture? Many scientists say it's all in our heads, or, more precisely, in the way men's and women's brains are designed and the way they function.
A century ago, the discovery that female brains were about 10 percent smaller than male brains was cited as proof that women could never be as smart as men ? contributing to their status as second-class citizens. We now know that size isn't everything when it comes to brainpower. Our I.Q.s are the same. In fact, the highest recorded I.Q. belongs to a woman, a writer named Marilyn vos Savant.
There are other, perhaps more significant, differences that distinguish male and female brains. Male brains are wired to move information quickly within each side ? or hemisphere ? of the brain. This gives them better spatial abilities. They can see an object in space, and react quickly.
In women's brains, areas of the cerebral cortex ? linked to language, judgment and memory ? are more densely packed with nerve cells than men's brains. This allows them to process that information more effectively.
Fisher explained that the corpus callosum, which she describes as a "big highway between the two sides of the brain," is larger in women toward the rear than it is in men. "Hence," she said, "the two sides of the brain are better interconnected" in women.
This means that women can absorb and analyze all sorts of information from the environment simultaneously. This makes women more adept at multitasking, while men tend to do better tackling one thing at a time.
Hard-Wired in the Womb?
Scientists are developing new ways of looking inside the working brain ? to see just how it's wired. Diagnostic tests such as Functional MRIs, which can measure blood flow, electrical activity and energy use, are being used to give researchers pictures of our brains in action.
Drs. Ruben and Raquel Gur, a husband and wife neuroscience team at the University of Pennsylvania, put men and women inside an MRI and studied how their brains responded to various verbal and spatial tasks.
In each case, the men's brains "lit up" in a few specific areas, while the women's brains showed activity in many areas ? for both spatial and verbal tasks. Ruben Gur said the men's brain activity became completely focused, while women did exactly the opposite, activating other parts of their brain.
Researchers have found that the male brain's ability to focus on one area works better for spatial tests, while the female brain's approach is better for verbal tests. Scientists are still trying to figure out why that's the case.
The differences, researchers say, begin in the womb. At first, all fetuses' brains are virtually the same. At about nine weeks, however, testosterone surges through the male fetus, not only creating a boy's body but actually hard-wiring the brain to be male. Without testosterone to spur those changes, girls develop "female" brains.
Michael Lewis, director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, has documented behavioral differences in children as young as one year of age. In one study, Lewis placed toddler boys and girls behind a barrier, blocking them from reaching their mothers.
The male and female children had very different strategies for getting past the barrier. Lewis said, "The boy child wants to get back to mom and it's going to climb over that barrier. It's going to knock it down. It's gonna push on it. It's gonna try to go around the side."
The girls' strategy? According to Lewis, they "get help from another person." Interestingly, the female children got out from behind the barrier faster than the boys. They showed distress, and their mothers came and picked them up.
An Old Brain in a Modern Culture
The degree to which individuals' behavior is determined by their physiological make-up remains a hotly debated question. Lewis points out that children grow up in a world that reinforces boy and girl differences ? through cartoons, commercials, clothing ? and their behavior as adults will be shaped by these social cues.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, a biologist at Brown University, thinks these external influences are so substantial that we shouldn't study the brain in isolation. "I balk at the notion that our brains are hard-wired," Fausto-Sterling said. "Our brains develop, and they develop new connections. So, you never have development outside of culture and experience," she said.
Fausto-Sterling, like Lewis, pointed out that children are bombarded with "heavily gendered messages." Fausto-Sterling said these messages "start earlier than we can imagine."
Some researchers say the perception that men excel in motor and spatial skills while women are stronger in the verbal department is not just an over-parodied stereotype. Evolutionary scientists claim it all began with our ancient ancestors.
Fisher said it all goes back to the hunter-gatherer days. Women needed verbal and emotional skills to cajole, educate and discipline their babies, while men needed spatial skills out on the hunt. "We've got an old brain in a very modern culture."
From the Classroom to Career Choices
Researchers are also trying to understand why boys and girls often show stark differences in academic performance. In grade school, girls usually outshine the boys in every subject, including math. In high school, however, it's a different subject altogether.
Lewis noted that "early math really isn't math. It's really more language problems." Once puberty hits, boys get a second surge of testosterone and their math and spatial abilities climb dramatically ? but some researchers don't exactly know what the connection is. By the time high school kids take their SATs, boys outscore girls in the math section by 7 percent.
Fisher said, "It's quite remarkable how much better boys become at all kinds of spatial skills, mechanical skills, engineering skills, when that surge of testosterone comes on them." Meanwhile, estrogen starts flooding the girls' bodies, and experts think that boosts helps them develop stronger verbal and memory skills. According to Fisher, a woman's verbal ability climbs rapidly during the middle of the monthly menstrual cycle, when estrogen levels peak.
Some researchers say these physiological differences may predispose men and women to gravitate toward certain careers. Fisher notes that despite the move toward equal employment opportunity in the U.S. job market, some 85 percent of the architects in America are still men, and 90 percent of the mechanics are still men. She said she's not at all surprised that men gravitate to those jobs that need and require mechanical spatial skills. Meanwhile, 94 percent of all speech therapists are women, and 99 percent of all pre-school and kindergarten teachers are female.
Fausto-Sterling cautions that an over-emphasis on innate brain differences may unfairly limit an individual's opportunities. "By saying something is innate we shut doors and say, 'Well, this is just the way it is.' We close down possibilities. For every woman I think of who's sort of stereotypically female, I can think of one who isn't, and the same for men."
Michael Lewis agrees. "Even if there are dispositions we're born with, it doesn't mean environments can't alter them. The thing we know about brains now, that we didn't know ten years ago, is that the brain is not a static organ. It's changing throughout our lives," Lewis said.
Beauty and the Brain
Differences in the way male and female brains work don't just affect our career choices or academic aptitudes, they control the way we perceive beauty, and they may affect how our bodies deal with stress and disease.
While romantics believe love comes from the heart, scientists know it starts with the brain. When the brain sees something it likes ? a very distinct message is transmitted throughout the body.
Researchers have learned that beauty taps into a part of the brain called the limbic system, which deals with craving and reward. Dr. Nancy Etcoff, a Harvard psychologist, has been studying how the brain responds to beauty.
She observed that the so-called reward area in men's brains lit up when they were shown pictures of beautiful women. The same reward circuitry is triggered for many different pleasures, researchers say. Some people will respond similarly to a good meal, cocaine will trigger the same reaction in addicts. When men were shown photos of attractive men, however, there was no activity in the brain's reward center at all.
Women responded differently to the photos. "They wanted to get a second look, not only at the beautiful men, but at the beautiful women," Etcofff said.
Depression and Women
Because the two halves of their brains are better connected, women may be more prone to emotional problems. Women make up some two-thirds of those who suffer from depression. Some researchers say the root of this may lie in the balance of estrogen and other chemicals in the female brain.
Depression in females usually begins after age 13, when puberty and estrogen kick in. It is most prevalent during a woman's childbearing years, and drops off after menopause.
Autoimmune diseases also affect more women than men. Dr. Esther Sternberg of the National Institutes of Health said women sufferers of these diseases outnumber men by a two-to-one ratio. Again, researchers think that estrogen is behind it. The hormone plays a major role in the immune system. When released, it acts in delicate balance with other hormones in the brain, including those that fight stress. When estrogen and other hormones are in equilibrium, the immune system fights off disease. If the balance if off, however, the immune system can fall asleep at the switch, making you vulnerable to colds and flu, or it can become hyper-alert and begin attacking your own body. This can lead to autoimmune diseases.
But researchers are working on new medicines that may target the root of the problem. They're working to develop drugs that focus on the brain to control illnesses that devastate the body. Sternberg said, "We have a whole new category of drugs that we can begin to develop and test, and use to treat ? a whole host of auto-immune diseases."
In reading through both articles I found them to be totally opposite in findings, funny how much more we've advanced in just 37 years!
Kate