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On the brain differences between men and women with a larger sample size. Thoughts?

Strikester101

February 19, 2020

13 upvotes

/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates

https://twitter.com/LaraWierenga/status/1229735089086566400?s=19

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Post Information

Title	On the brain differences between men and women with a larger sample size. Thoughts?
Author	Strikester101
Upvotes	13
Comments	47
Date	February 19, 2020 6:09 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/f6eod9/on_the_brain_differences_between_men_and_women/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/on-the-brain-differences-between-men-and-women.1063988 https://theredarchive.com/post/1063988

Comments

[–]Strikester101[S] 11 points12 points13 points 6 years ago (28 children) | Copy Link

[–]Lupercus64 8 points9 points10 points 6 years ago (11 children) | Copy Link

I think all they are referring to is the fact that men are predisposed to a lot of disorders like autism. Not really my field, but what I took from it was they would like to further investigate this area to better understand the mechanisms that lead to such variability as they believe that those mechanism may also play a role in vulnerability to developmental disorders or later in life mental disease, possibly even from a genetic level. It's important to note that their main conclusion is that there is more variability in brain size/structure among men than women; investigating how that contributes to mental disorder and "male vulnerability" is what they are proposing for future work by tying it to the fact that patients with ASD also show atypical brain structure patterns.

I think the important part of this paper is that they establish that there is a difference in variability between male and female, whereas the current standard in studies assume variability is equal, and that the variance changes with age. I also want to note the authors disclaimer that their recruitment methods may have recruited some individuals that are not representative of the entire population and that the methods for measuring across such a wide range, both geographically and chronologically, may have introduce additional variability.

Also this article is in preprint, and we are reading a draft that has not yet gone through peer revision.

[–]Strikester101[S] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

[+]cromulent_weasel1 points 6 years ago* [recovered] (9 children) | Copy Link

With autism specifically, part of it is that we are better at identifying it in men. Women with autism act different from men with autism and often go undetected.

But yeah, if there are disorders associated with being to the left of the curve, then there are more men in that space (and basically only men at the extreme fringes).

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 5 points6 points7 points 6 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[+]cromulent_weasel2 points 6 years ago* [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link

I thought the idea that we were underdiagnosing women with autism was put to bed, like 10+ years ago.

Maybe it has been but not everyone has up to date knowledge on everything.

[–]Strikester101[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]mewacketergi 3 points4 points5 points 6 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[+]cromulent_weasel1 points 6 years ago* [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link

Oh I'm aware.

[–]mewacketergi 3 points4 points5 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]genkernels 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Kuato2012left-wing male advocate 7 points8 points9 points 6 years ago (13 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (12 children) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Kuato2012left-wing male advocate 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (8 children) | Copy Link

[–]SchalaZeal01 7 points8 points9 points 6 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

[–]Kuato2012left-wing male advocate 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

I think I know the study you're referring to. It was a neat experiment, though not entirely clean... It was the women who got placebo but believed they got T who behaved stereotypically more aggressively. That indicates that their prejudices affected their behavior.

I'm not saying that T only increases aggression (the same study and others showed that it even increases some prosocial behaviors). But if you compare male mammals to females of their species, or male pets pre- and post-neutering, it appears that T promotes aggressive behavior. Which isn't that surprising when the females are guaranteed to breed, but the males often have fight for it.

I don't like it when misandrists weaponize that information against men, of course. But the correlation between T and aggression does hold, as far as I'm aware.

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Different study but similar results:

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/81/10/3754/2650112

On anger:

No significant differences were observed in any of the subdomains of the MA1 scores at the baseline (before administration of the drug), between the subjects who received testosterone and the subjects who received the placebo. Analysis of variance with repeated measures revealed no significant differences in the interaction between treatment and time for any of the five subdomains of anger-in (P > 0.905), anger-out (P > 0.071), hostile outlook (P > 0.553), anger arousal (P > 0.612), and the range of anger eliciting situations (P > 0.343).

On mood:

There were no significant group differences between the testosterone or placebo treated subjects on any of the items related to general mood either before or at the end of the 10-week treatment period (Table 2). There was also no significant time-by-treatment interaction. Similarly, there were no significant differences in group scores related to emotional stability or angry behavior between the subjects receiving testosterone and the subjects receiving the placebo either before or after the treatment period; there were also no significant time-by-treatment interactions (Table 2).

[–]SchalaZeal01 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Kuato2012left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]SchalaZeal01 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Kuato2012left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]genkernels 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]GaborFrame 3 points4 points5 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Egalitarianwhistle 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Lady_Coraline2 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (16 children) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 7 points8 points9 points 6 years ago (13 children) | Copy Link

[–]Lady_Coraline2 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (12 children) | Copy Link

Just a random "shower thought" but what if that socialization process is biological? Meaning parents are biologically predisposed to treat baby boys differently from baby girls, which then causes these differences?

Given that pre-pubescent children would look completely identical if we didn't dress and groom them differently based on their genitals, I'm skeptical. It would be interesting to compare and contrast the development of gender-specific behavior in chimpanzees (who have a sex-based hierarchy) and bonobos (who are equidistantly related to us but do not) though. One third of Frans de Waal's Our Inner Ape is about sex, I'll have to reread it and see if he discusses this at all.

Even if it were true, that just suggests that we have the power to use our human intelligence and nominal free will to stop gendering infants based on their genitalia.

but there are some differences that are pretty hard to blame society for.

Such as?

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (11 children) | Copy Link

[–]Lady_Coraline2 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

[–]problem_redditorright-wing guest 9 points10 points11 points 6 years ago* (3 children) | Copy Link

Here are the differences between men and women on "brain things".

Infants from as young as 9-17 months of age display gender-stereotypical toy preferences. "Children in the youngest group, who were aged between 9-17 months when infants are able to crawl or walk and therefore make independent selections [were] ... particularly interesting; the ball was a favourite choice for the youngest boys and the youngest girls favoured the cooking pot."

Females on average tend to be stronger verbally than males, whereas males tend to be stronger visually. Even in infants which are 5 months old, boys use mental rotation more than girls do.

A massive study using a sample of about 700,000 people found rather considerable sex differences between men and women on systemising (the drive to analyse or build a system) and empathising (the drive to recognise and respond to another person’s state of mind). "The team identified that in the typical population, women, on average, scored higher than men on empathy, and men, on average, scored higher than women on systemising."

Before you say this is all due to socialisation, rhesus monkeys and vervet monkeys display similar toy preferences as are seen in human children, and I doubt their societies say much on the matter.

Furthermore, there's a bunch of evidence that these gendered differences are linked to differential hormone exposure beginning from as early as inside the womb - for example, though both male and female foetuses produce testosterone, male foetuses produce more than 2.5 times the levels observed in females.

Animal studies demonstrate that foetal testosterone plays a very major role in shaping the brain as either a ‘male’ or a ‘female’ type. In general, these animal experiments have compared castrated males, normal males, normal females and females treated with androgens. Castrated males usually show feminised neural development, cognition and behaviour, while females treated with androgen show masculinised neural development, cognition and behaviour in a number of species.

This can be observed among humans too. Girls with a disorder called congenital adrenal hyperplasia which causes excess production of male sex hormones in the prenatal and early postnatal periods show masculinised toy preferences. They also reach higher scores on cognitive parameters such as spatial ability than their nonaffected counterparts. Females with this disorder not only differ mentally, but also physically: they have an enlarged clitoris or genitals that look more male than female (ambiguous genitalia) at birth.

Similarly, men who have lower (more masculine) 2D:4D ratios in their digits, an indicator of exposure to high levels of prenatal testosterone, are more risk-seeking. And risk-seeking is a trait that is usually more pronounced on males on average than in females. Females tend to be more risk-averse.

Research has shown that testosterone therapy given as part of sex reassignment changes the brain structure and the pathway associated with speech and verbal fluency. Higher testosterone is linked to smaller vocabulary in children and similarly verbal fluency skills decrease in female-to-male transsexuals after testosterone treatment. Female-to-male gender reassignment results in local brain matter decrease within language processing regions, which may explain why verbal abilities are often stronger in women.

A study examining foetal testosterone levels (measured in amniotic fluid) and its influence on sex differences in systemising found in a sample of 204 children that males scored significantly higher than females on systemising. They also found in a stepwise regression analysis that foetal testosterone was the only significant predictor of systemising preference when the sexes were analysed together.

So I'm not exactly sure how one can look at all this and chalk all observable gendered differences up to socialisation. There's clearly a biological basis for it and while culture and socialisation may play a role in reinforcing these differences it's most certainly not all that's going on.

u/Oncefa2 - I think you might be interested in all this, as well.

[–]Lady_Coraline2 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

Definitely saving this comment.

I think it's interesting that girls preferred the cooking pot over a ball though. It makes sense that boys might prefer a ball given its primitive shape. It's not something found in nature but it is something simple enough that a preference to play with a ball could have biological roots. After all, dogs enjoy playing with balls. And even a cat, completely untrained, will chase a ball rolling across the floor.

A cooking pot doesn't have any kind of obvious place in biology though. They are built by people for a specific purpose that shouldn't be obvious to someone until they're taught what it does.

A preference for dolls would be much more conclusive for that type of study.

Like u/Lady_Coraline2 said, infants are socialized at a very young age. And to me, a preference to play with a cooking pot could be used as evidence for that (a more outlandish theory: memories from a past life could influence these preferences).

I don't discount biological differences though. It's just difficult to empirically study. Which is honestly kind of a shame because it's a very interesting question.

The best evidence I've ran across (which is related to some of the stuff you posted) is the fact that gay men and lesbian women tend to be in the middle when it comes to various mental aptitudes. Those differences start at a very young age and are reflected by differences in brain structures that are potentially caused by prenatal hormones that the mother produces (which is a similar mechanism proposed to be at work when it comes to gender differences).

[–]SchalaZeal01 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]Lady_Coraline2 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Fair enough. I haven't looked at the research that much but I'm under the impression that what differences do exist are small (and potentially caused by differences in socialization).

Fwiw muscle mass is associated with brain size throughout the animal kingdom. You need more neurons to control larger numbers of muscle fibers. However, those neurons do not contribute to intelligence because they are only used to coordinate muscle movement.

Intelligence between species is therefore not associated with brain size, but with the ratio between brain size and muscle mass. For example, elephants have much larger brains than humans. And while they are smart, humans are smarter. And we also have a larger ratio between our average muscle mass and brain size.

This relationship between intelligence, brain size, and muscle mass, has not been demonstrated between genders, race, or even in specific people. But the theory is that women might have smaller brains because they have fewer muscle fibers compared to men. So in other words, there is a good explanation for why men and women are (or could be) equally as intelligent, even though men have larger brains.

[–]Strikester101[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Lady_Coraline2 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]Oncefa2left-wing male advocate 2 points3 points4 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link