Brains

Certain thinking skills are more lateralized Ð'- more dependent on one hemisphere Ð'- in the male brain than in the female.

For some types of tasks, especially those involving language, men seem to rely more heavily on one side of the brain whereas women tend to use both sides. This is incredibly interesting, but consider this:

First, in these studies both sexes usually do equally well on the task at hand. So what does the lateralization difference actually mean for anyone's behavior in real life? Who knows?

Second, the overlap between the sexes in these studies is often greater than any average difference between them. Scientists keep saying this, but no one seems to listen.

Third, sex differences in the brain could be the result rather than the cause of behavioral differences. Experiences in life are constantly sculpting the circuitry of the brain, affecting the way brains are organized and how they function. For example, bilingual people who learned both of their languages in early childhood tend to use a single, uniform Broca's area (Broca's area is the section of the human brain that is involved in language processing, speech production and comprehension) when they generate sentences in the two languages. But in people who learned a second language during adolescence, Broca's area is divided into two distinct regions, one for each language. Playing a stringed instrument in childhood enlarges parts of the brain associated with music production, and driving a taxi for years enlarges parts of the brain involved in spatial orientation. Obviously, women and men often have different experiences in childhood that could affect their brains accordingly. A scientist who identified lateralization differences in a study concluded, "We don't know if the difference [we found] is because of the way we're raised, or if it's hard-wired in the brain."

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