In a fascinating article in the LA Times, researcher Sandra Witelson reveals some most interesting findings about the human brain. A professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, Dr. Witelson has what amounts to the largest collection of human brains in the world.

You should read the whole article; every bit of it is interesting. For a quick distillation, however, one of the major themes is that there are very visible differences between men and women... to the point where it is possible to tell a person's sex by the brain alone.

Men and women appear to use different parts of the brain to encode memories, sense emotions, recognize faces, solve certain problems and make decisions. Indeed, when men and women of similar intelligence and aptitude perform equally well, their brains appear to go about it differently, as if nature had separate blueprints, researchers at UC Irvine reported this year.

"If you find that men and women have fundamentally different brain architectures while still accomplishing the same things," said neuroscientist Richard Haier, who conducted the study, "this challenges the assumption that all human brains are fundamentally the same."

Yet, for the most part, scientists have been unable to document such patterns conclusively.

No one, however, had scrutinized as many brains as Witelson.

I'm sure that in certain circles the well worn questions of hardwired behavior and aptitudes are sure to be invigorated.

...but I'm also sure that you don't need a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience to tell you that men and women think differently. :)

I wonder how far this vein of knowledge will progress.

I'm reminded of Gattica, a fairly bad movie that was difficult to sit through but still asked some excellent questions... and made a powerful statement about not letting someone else's view of your capabilities limit you.

I read a tangential article today about a controversial medicine that is being tested. It was somewhat of a failure when tested against a racially diverse test group, but when tested on a strictly black group it worked marvelously.

Studies have suggested that blacks tend to have lower levels of nitric oxide, and researchers noticed during studies in the 1980s that the drug combination, while appearing to offer no benefit in the general population, may be useful among black patients. A follow-up study involving 1,050 patients who identified themselves as African American was stopped early and released in November when it concluded that the drug significantly improved the quality of life, reduced the likelihood of being hospitalized by 39 percent and cut the chance of dying by 43 percent.

The Washington Post referred to the drug testing as "racial tailoring".

I hope that the social activists allow this kind of science to progress; there are a lot of things that I am sure that we can accomplish if we aren't afraid to recognize that we are all different: male, female, black, white, whatever. I don't think it's a good idea to, in the name of equality, blind ourselves to the fact that we aren't all the same.

Different is not by definition better, and my weaknesses and foibles exist whether I admit to them or not. I'm sure that this is true for all of us. :)

A polite tip of the hat to Professor Bainbridge.

Posted by Michael at June 17, 2005 06:40 PM