Though it is politically incorrect to say so, researchers have noted for some time that there are differences in the cognition of men and women. Specifically: Women on average have greater verbal ability than men and men on average have greater spatial ability than women. (These are statistical averages. In the concrete, many women have greater spatial aptitude than many men and many men have greater verbal aptitude than many women.)
Why is this?
Well . . .
It appears that there are significant differences in the grey matter
and white matter of men’s and women’s brains as associated with
intelligence:
Researchers say white and gray matter are both necessary for general intelligence, but they perform different functions. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the network or connections between those processing centers.
In the study, researchers studied brain scans of men and women who
had identical IQ (intelligence quotient, a measure of intelligence)
scores.
Overall, the
results showed that men had approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray
matter in areas related to general intelligence than women. Meanwhile,
women had nearly 10 times the amount of white matter in areas related
to intelligence than men.They
say the findings may help explain why men tend to excel at tasks that
require more local processing, such as mathematics, while women tend to
excel at integrating information, a skill used in language.The
study also showed differences in brain regions between men and women
related to intelligence. In particular, 84 percent of gray matter
regions and 86 percent of white matter regions involved in women’s
intelligence were found in their frontal lobes or front portion of the
brain compared with 45 percent and 0 percent for men, respectively.
Instead, regions throughout the left side of the brain seems to drive
male intelligence.
I think this information is brilliant. It relates in scientific, observable form (literally in gray and white) what has been observed through the centuries. Differing gifts in the area of intelligence, seen in the areas of language acuity and information processing, allow for men and women to complement each other as God has seen fit. Each sex created beautifully by the hand of God. Now that is truly awesome!
(Mutters incoherently while working on a math problem.)
Men, researchers; women analysts, hmm? Is this the scientific explanation for why husbands drive around aimlessly searching for the right route, ignoring their wives’ pleas to stop and ask for directions? 😉
I’ve also noticed that in general women seem to be better at multi-tasking then men.
I watched a program on TV once that was facinating. It showed women have better night vision than men. They have a better sense of smell. Men tend to be better able to concentrate on a single task than women. Also women can handle g-forces better than men. NASA had known this for a long time but wouldn’t release the data in the early astronaut years because they didn’t want women astronauts.
And yet, there are significant numbers of men good with languages and integration, and who are not effeminate, such as Aquinas, Tolkien, Lewis, Schaeffer, etc. (Indeed, without male generalists, there probably would be no civilization, certainly not beyond the secret knowledge guild structure of the ancients.)
Which may go to show that the claim that homosexuality is a result of having a female brain in a male body due to hormones during pregnancy is bunk, that it really is instead, a choice of wickedness as St. Paul wrote.
Indeed, (as I think about this), hunter-gatherers and farmers integrate all sorts of sensory input from the environment to get a unified picture of what is going on around them, all of that sub or even unconsciously. It has been noted that people with ADD do quite well as hunters or farmers, but not as cube farm inmates.
So, even though I do very much believe in the differences between men and women, I wonder what they were measuring. Neuronal densities change with regards to long-term inputs, such as one can see in classical musicians. What would the scan indications be if one were to look at !Kung bushmen?
Stephan, it isn’t that NASA doesn’t want female astronauts, it is that it is extremely difficult to design a zero-g urinal for women astronauts, and even more so in EVA suits.
Also the original astronauts were all test pilots for various branches of the military, and back in the 1950s, we didn’t have women doing that sort of thing, so there were none with experience come the 1960s.
“Which may go to show that the claim that homosexuality is a result of having a female brain in a male body due to hormones during pregnancy is bunk, that it really is instead, a choice of wickedness as St. Paul wrote.”
Um, I think you’re conflating two different pieces of incomplete information. First, I’ve heard of no such study that claims gay men have a female brain, except for anecdotal sociological evidence that many flamboyant, outspoken gays *act* feminine. Second, all hormone studies indicate that gays (both men and women) are hypermasculinated, not hyperfeminized.