My #3 speech…
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Have you ever wondered why some women can’t sleep well at night? Well….it’s finally explained here in one, easy-to-understand illustration:
Every one of those little blue balls is a thought about something that needs to be done, a decision or a problem that needs to be solved…
A man has only 2 and they take up all his thoughts!!!
Hey, at least that made you laugh ;-).
Well, that joke triggered my curiosity to find out more about whether biologically, women are really wired that differently from men, or is this just another example of stereotype gender humor?
While looking up a book that may address this question of mine in layman terms, I bumped into THIS book instead “The Female Brain,” and it got my attention (sounds like I should be looking for a book on ADD next!!!). Though the title sounds biased, it turns out to be quite funny and it does indeed answer my original question, and at the same time brings up some other interesting facts about female behaviors. The author is actually coming out with her next book “The Male Brain” this year, and I’m more interested in reading that one ;-).
The book covers quite a lot of details on the wide range of structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal, and functional brain differences, and being a total ignorant on neurobiology that I’m, I’d like to share 3 points that I personally found easy to understand and intriguing: the structural differences, the hormonal impact, and the role environment has on brain development.
Structural Differences:
As you can see from the handout, there are some real biological differences in various parts of our brains between male and female, and even though they seem small, they apparently contribute greatly to our behavioral disparities. For example, #1 on the picture is the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. It weighs options, makes decisions, and is the worry-wort center. It’s larger in women than in men. No wonder it spins off all of those balls you saw in the previous cartoon :-D. Or #5, the Amygdala, the most primitive area of the brain, the wild beast within, the instinctive core. It’s larger in men than women. It registers fear and triggers aggression. This is why some men can go from zero to a fistfight in a matter of seconds, while many women will try anything to defuse conflict. Or #7, the Hippocampus, the principle hub of emotion and memory formation. Or as the picture describes it, the elephant that never forgets a fight, a romantic encounter, or a tender moment, and won’t let you forget it either. I once heard a joke that compares a computer to a woman because even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
Hormonal Impact:
On top of the structural variances, the female brain is also deeply affected by hormones. According to this book, and I quote, “hormones actually create the woman’s reality.” They can shape a woman’s values and desires, and tell her, day to day, what’s important. Worse, they constantly change as a woman enters various states of her life – girlhood, the adolescent years, the dating years, motherhood, menopause, etc. During puberty, girls start to have more estrogen developed in their brain while boys are bombarded with testosterone. As estrogen floods the female brain, girls start to focus intensely on their emotions and communication – talking on the phone and connecting with other girlfriends. On the other hand, the testosterone in the boys’ brain makes them grow less communicative and more competitive. They are obsessed about scoring, be it in games or in the backseat of a car. And then when it’s time to decide on a career path, females can tend to focus more on relationships, finding a lifelong mate, and choosing a career compatible with raising a family because of their high level of estrogen. This is why statistically, a lot of women drop out of scientific & engineering fields to change to something else more sociable because of the hormonal effects on the female brain compelling connection and communication.
Nature vs. Nurture:
And finally comes the question of Nature versus Nurture or perhaps a combination of both? Let’s think about how you first learned to play the piano, it wasn’t that great (unless you’re Mozart), but after persistent practicing, playing becomes second nature. So, does your brain assign more neurons to that activity until you finally have laid new circuits between these neurons? According to the book, it’s inextricably both. Let’s think about how a mother would understandably more likely to stop her little daughter from climbing up a ladder than her boy. So, even though the little girl might already have more reservation than her brother because of her biological brain differences, this pattern by the mother, over time, will re-organize the brain accordingly as well. One interesting theory is that if we deliberately change sex-role behavior – say men become more nurturing or women more aggressive – scientists believe our hormones and even our brains will respond by changing as well.
In conclusion, the human brain & mind (for that matter) is a complicated but beautiful thing. It seems like the more we know about it, the more intriguing and mysterious it becomes. But with as much information as we can gather about our biology and physiology, I hope that we all can find somewhat of a satisfaction in understanding why we feel and behave the way we do, and from there, to improve whichever portions that we can in order to be our best at all times.
