It occurs to me that I know absolutely nothing about the brain... gyrification seems to be the "wrinkliness" of the brain? what do the frontal/parietal parts "do" (if we know)? and I'm confused about white vs grey matter...
I've been trying to get people to answer "what does that part do?" for the past two years (while I've been back to school). I haven't gotten any answers I like, yet.
However, if you're looking for a basic jumping off point, I highly recommend Eric Chudler's Neuroscience for Kids website. He describes the frontal lobe as concerned with reasoning, planning, emotion, and problem solving, and the parietal as perception of stimuli related to touch (pressure, temperature, pain).
I'm not sure what you're asking for here. Haeir is reporting a correlation between differences in areas that are active on cognitively demanding tasks and one's score of success at that task. What's the objection?
The people trying to use Haeir's results to explain differences in anything other than cognitive ability are just making a category mistake. His results are about the differences between genders in the substrate of g that's all. But so far as it goes his work is plenty solid.
Right. I liked your strength analogy at neuroscience. I'm still not entirely convinced that he's demonstrated activity, but I did let myself get confounded by arguments that used bad interpretations of his work. Thanks.
You're right actually, it's been a couple of years since I'd read the paper and I forgot that all he did in that one was analyze the differences in morphology that correlated with differences in g. Maybe I was getting it mixed up with his other paper that found that rate of glucose metabolism during cognitive activity correlated inversely with g. Looking at brain activity in real time as subjects did, say, the RAPM test could be enlightening.
FWIW I've been a "guinea pig" for neuroscientists on several occassions so I have had the opportunity see different kinds of scans done on my own brain, with awareness of my own behiours and the likely relationship between the two. The reason i've been in studies is related to a neurological disorder/differances rather than gender/sex ones
If there are gender/sex related to brain differences, then that'd simply be a fact IMHO that there is a biological reason for people to preference certain parts of their brains. Through awareness a person could find ways to compensate for where they have a weakness, but they cannot change the physical nature of their brain- they are not failing to use something that tis missing, damaged, less effective than another part of the brain, missing connections to antoehr part of the brain, or for some other reason biologically favoured.
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gyrification seems to be the "wrinkliness" of the brain?
what do the frontal/parietal parts "do" (if we know)?
and I'm confused about white vs grey matter...
Yay something I can learn!
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I've been trying to get people to answer "what does that part do?" for the past two years (while I've been back to school). I haven't gotten any answers I like, yet.
However, if you're looking for a basic jumping off point, I highly recommend Eric Chudler's Neuroscience for Kids website. He describes the frontal lobe as concerned with reasoning, planning, emotion, and problem solving, and the parietal as perception of stimuli related to touch (pressure, temperature, pain).
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(that's probably exactly the level I need...)
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The people trying to use Haeir's results to explain differences in anything other than cognitive ability are just making a category mistake. His results are about the differences between genders in the substrate of g that's all. But so far as it goes his work is plenty solid.
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Could you comment on what white matter is vs. grey matter, for those of us who don't know anything about brains?
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Apparently there's ANOTHER Haier study that looked at function, but I haven't found the link yet.
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FWIW I've been a "guinea pig" for neuroscientists on several occassions so I have had the opportunity see different kinds of scans done on my own brain, with awareness of my own behiours and the likely relationship between the two. The reason i've been in studies is related to a neurological disorder/differances rather than gender/sex ones
If there are gender/sex related to brain differences, then that'd simply be a fact IMHO that there is a biological reason for people to preference certain parts of their brains. Through awareness a person could find ways to compensate for where they have a weakness, but they cannot change the physical nature of their brain- they are not failing to use something that tis missing, damaged, less effective than another part of the brain, missing connections to antoehr part of the brain, or for some other reason biologically favoured.
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