Neurosexism

Today's Sydney Morning Herald newspaper ran an article from The Observer which attempts to debunk the myth that differences between the sexes is hard-wired into the human brain. Associate Professor Lise Eliot, interviewed for the article, says that too much emphasis is placed on very minor developmental differences (three per cent or less) between male and female brains, when we should be focussing on the overwhelming similarities. Drawing too much attention to the differences leads to enlarging them by socialising girls and boys differently, in the manner of the Venus/Mars dichotomy popularised by John Gray. "Pernicious pinkification of little girls" is the way the article describes it.

"There is almost nothing we do with our brains that is hard-wired. Every skill, attribute and personality trait is moulded by experience," Lise Eliot says.

Right brain, left brain II

I recently discussed the issue of duality of the brain and our ever-increasing knowledge of the way the two hemispheres work, separately and together. The traditional understanding of right brain for art and left brain for science is beautifully illustrated in the works above by artist Don Stewart. Stewart trained as a medical doctor before quitting a surgical internship to devote his time to art and writing. His drawings, made using a ballpoint pen, reveal a deep understanding of anatomy and physiology combined with a quirky sense of humour.

Visit his website and choose your favourite. (I like the one called "Quack".)

Of mice and men and worms

Wilberforce (supposedly) asked Huxley, in their famous debate on The Origin of Species, "Is it on your grandfather's or grandmother's side that you claim descent from a monkey?" Wonder how he would have felt if he read this report about a study of gene expression in the brain that points to the existence of a common ancestor of both mammals and worms about 580 million years ago?

Imagining the brain

I stumbled across this brain art exhibition from high school students in Cambridge, UK. The organisers of the annual competition say:

Imagining the Brain is:
A dialogue about science, especially neuroscience
An artistic expression of science and its wider implications.

The themes for works submitted in 2010 were "Diversity or Disorder" and "[St]Ages of the Brain". Click on the link above to see the gallery of submissions from local teenagers, along with some of the judges' comments: there's a lot of food for thought.

SAX on the brain

If you're in Sydney, please check out my friend Ian Saxby's science-inspired artworks at his show on Saturday, September 11th. The show is at 2pm, at Derivan, Unit 4/23 Leeds Street, Rhodes. One of the works on display will be his brainy painting, Beelzebub, that I've featured in this blog before.

Dream on, daydreamers

An article from the New York Times reports that electronic multitasking is making us dumber. By filling every idle moment with mental input and sensory stimuli of all kinds, we're reducing our brains' downtime. (I recently wrote about a similar article extolling the virtues of daydreaming.) It is becoming apparent that we need the occasional zoning-out zone to absorb information and lay down long-term memories. Nature walks, apparently, are much better for you than a stroll down a city street.

Bushwalk, anyone?

Left brain, right brain

The latest neuroscience book on my reading list is The Yipping Tiger, by Perminder Sachdev. (You may recall that he was on a panel with Lone Frank that I attended during this year's Writers' Festival.) In chapter two, discussing a man who chooses to have the two halves of his brain disconnected to combat debilitating epilepsy, Dr Sachdev writes:

The strange behaviour of Robert's left hand takes one on a long journey of the concept of the double-brain that began in its rudimentary form with the philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) and reached its zenith in the debates of the classical neurologists of the nineteenth century.... The double-brain theory was a potent source of psychological theorising in the nineteenth century, some of which was the consequence of over-enthusiastic leaps of logic.

....Was there indeed a double consciousness or a duality of mind after all? Or was it more fruitful to conceptualise it in terms of specialisation in the brain, with the coordinated activity in these regions laying the foundation for an individual's personality and consciousness? Was the right/left difference the basis for the two dichotomies of existence: rational and emotive–intuitive, propositional and appositional, yin and yang, science and art? The debates that followed were fertile ground for a range of ideas on politics, culture, society, arts and philosophy, which I will not discuss here.

Many people express surprise when I talk about the Kingdom of the Blind project combining my interests in art and science, because the received wisdom is that those subjects are located on different sides of the brain and one must be dominant over the other, or possibly even preclude the other. I hope that one of the results of my work on this project is that it makes people reassess their assumptions about the human brain and how it works.

On a related note, you can listen to this week's Skeptoid podcast, in which Brian Dunning discusses the commonly used Myers-Briggs personality test and its attempts to divide people into two opposing categories (extrovert/introvert, rational/intuitive, etc). Food for thought!