British Science Festival: Male-female brain differences ‘don’t exist’

Can we please stop talking about sex?

It appears that we have been trying so hard to find differences between the male and the female brain that we have missed all the evidence that shows there are none.

This is the take-home message from a talk which Prof Gina Rippon, of the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University in Birmingham, gave on Tuesday at the British Science Festival.

The popular belief that male and female brains are wired differently has given rise to a number of self-help books with outrageously creative titles such as Men are Clams, Women are Crowbars.

Prof Rippon refers to these derisively as “Neurotrash”.

“It seems to be very important to allow the concept that men and women’s brains are different to continue,” she says.

But she believes we may be asking the wrong questions on the subject. “Maybe the differences are so hard to find because they don’t exist.”

She cited a large study analysing brain activity data from several reports which had showed differences between male and female brains.

Enjoyment of boxing

The authors showed that real differences between men and women’s brains could only be found in categories such as self-rated enjoyment of boxing, choosing between watching porn and taking a bath, and the use of cosmetics.

"Are our cognitive skills, temperaments, personalities neatly divisive into just two categories? Are our brains really neatly divisible into just two types, determined by the sex of their owners?" Prof Rippon asks.

She states the idea that our brains are fixed at a young age is antiquated. “We now know that the brain is plastic, changing all the time […]depending on what you do,” she says.

For example, a study of taxi drivers in London revealed a particular part of their brain associated with spatial processing and memory was larger than in average people, and decreased when they retired.

Structure changed

Teaching people to juggle or play Tetris for six weeks also changed the brain structure quite profoundly.

“Our brains are also permeable - they will change depending on the attitudes and expectations of the world around you,” Prof Rippon says, highlighting studies carried out on members of minority groups that tend to underperform at certain tasks. If this fact was brought to their attention before the test, they did underperform.

“It is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Prof Rippon says. “Our behaviour will change with stereotypes and so will our brains.”