Brains + Sex = Controversy
Neuroscientists say suggestions that male and female brains are fundamentally different are based on gender stereotypes - Guardian
Brains + Sex = Controversy - Neuroskeptic, DicoveryMag | September 20, 2016
What sex is your brain?
Well?
This is the question asked by an exhibit at London’s Science Museum which created a bit of a hoo-ha this week. As the Guardian puts it:
"The Science Museum in London is facing criticism for a “junk science” exhibit that asks visitors to test whether they have a blue or pink brain.
"The interactive exhibit presents a series of questions that claim to measure whether a person’s brain is more typically male or female.
"Neuroscientists said the suggestion that the brains of men and women are fundamentally different was based on unhelpful gender stereotypes rather than sound science."
The contentious test is available online here. It consists of six tasks, each of which seems to be adapted from a commonly-used paradigm from experimental psychology: there’s a mental rotation task, an embedded figures test, and four others. - - - READ FULL NEUROSKEPTIC ARTICLE
Pink Brains, Blue Brains - Mindful.org
Testosterone and oestrogen have opposite effects on brain structure
Bad news: Your husband's brain is bigger than yours.
Good news: It DEFINITELY doesn't mean he's cleverer
[NOTES] - I have always advocated that small brains does not equate to small intelligence, if the body is also small. (Sorry for the bad syntax). Insects move faster relative to us, and do calculations much faster than we do.* Bees have brains which are the size of sesame seeds. But the only area where our species is demonstrably more intelligent than bees is in our ability to make other species go extinct. We are massively stupid, I'd say, so divorced from the full multiplicity of natural information. So, all the hullabaloo over the relative sizes of men's and women's brain, it means nothing. Both men and women are equally intelligent at screwing things up.
When my brain was scanned a few weeks ago, I was hoping to find out who's brain I had. In some respects, my brain is very feminine. Add to this the fact that I take phytoestrogens, and also finasteride, to reduce stress. The former works against testosterone, and the latter works against DHT - the Woody-Allen form of testosterone. (It also helps my bones to be taking the former). So, these might have influenced my brain "gender" - (which is along a continuum).
I have thought about the new CRISPR gene-editing technology. Could it be used to convert a male's genes over to a females? Not likely, since the male Y chromosome is an entire chromosome, and not a tiny specific gene able to be edited. And, the Neandertal males lacked Y chromosome genes, by 200,000 years ago. So, it is possible to lose the Y chromosome and still be male - because something else fills in for it... Now, there is the report that there is something OTHER than the Y chromosome which can determine the male, versus the female, sex. This new genetic area, thus, at least hypothetically, be able to be edited by CRISPR technology. If this is so, then males could be transformed into women through very simply procedures. Or - maybe not. One can only imagine.
How to be a male without the Y chromosome
The real big bombshell would be the finding that telomeres could be restored via CRISPR technology, allowing the elites to live for hundreds of years, yay.
Finally, I am including this article about the brain and cognition for a few reasons. For one thing, male-brains, versus female-brains, have a lot to do with cognitive biases. Reinforced neural channels. Also, cognitive biases are part-and-parcel of forms of DENIAL. I will be writing about how "HYPE" is the active side of denial - it is the cognitive rationalisation(s) we use which justify other things we ignore or deny, and push out of our awareness and responsibility - like, you know, the poor, or other species. HYPE seems to me to be made up mainly of two things FEAR, and/or DESIRE. Then, it gets elevated into fundamentalist-type abstractions or laws. I could write more now, but unfortunately my brain is becoming extremely fatigued, a CFS consequence to my recent day shopping. So, here is a link, and please remember my concept of HYPE while you read it. More later, mind you.
Beware Your Biased Brain
* - Smaller brains, in smaller bodies, do not heat up as much as do larger brains. Why? Higher mass-to-surface area. (This is why bigger and bigger piles of rags are more and more likely to spontaneously combust. Grain silos. Planets. This is also why larger, rounder people TEND to originate from colder climates, because this preserves heat better. Shorter, skinnier people TEND to originate from closer to the equator). So, smaller animals, who also require less effort with their lesser weight, in a different environment, have less need to YAWN to cool their brains! - What am I talking about? - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3821906/Your-yawn-reveal-smart-Mammals-bigger-complex-brains-gape-longer.html
Here's a curio: When we are born, we are pink. When we die, we turn blue. The colours of life and death. It's all about the oxygen, baby. The oxygen.