One of the biggest barriers to equality is crumbling, thanks to a study that blows away the misconception that male and female brains are distinct.
Based on detailed and careful analysis of core features seen in scans of more than 1400 female and male human brains, Israeli researcher Daphna Joel and colleagues demonstrated that most are unique mixes or 鈥渕osaics鈥� of features previously thought to be either 鈥渕ale鈥� or 鈥渇emale鈥�. A brain that is not a mix was found to be extremely rare.
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The result is a major challenge to the entrenched misconceptions typified by the 鈥渕en are from Mars, women are from Venus鈥� hokum. My hope is it will be a game-changer for the 21st century.
Crucially, it means the power of neuroimaging to explore and explain the links between brain and behaviour can at last come into its own, freed from the constraints of preconceived stereotypes. Our understanding of sex-related brain differences will move beyond simple and outdated dichotomous thinking.
Knowing the controversy associated with such declarations, the authors have been very careful to use a range of different datasets from different laboratories and to investigate the veracity of their findings using more than a single neuroimaging measure.
Their paper adds to similar discussions in neuroscience, as well as to the canon of recent findings that previously 鈥渨ell-established鈥� sex differences in brain structures turn out to be false when are applied.
And it gels with the broader idea that the biology of sex differences is not what we thought. A news feature in last year proclaimed: 鈥淪ex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic鈥�, reporting data showing that, even in the most fundamental aspects of sexual differentiation, including chromosomes, cells and genital anatomy, thinking in simple male/female terms is no longer tenable.
What鈥檚 more, for several years, psychologists have been saying that, in terms of cognitive skills and personality characteristics, the 鈥渢wo鈥� sexes are . Just knowing whether someone is male or female is a of almost any kind of behaviour.
Most recently, researchers showed that, on into two distinct categories.
Joel鈥檚 paper is also timely. In the US, the National Institutes of 91色情片, the world鈥檚 largest biomedical research institution, has the inclusion of both sexes in preclinical and clinical research and some European funding is predicated on at all stages of the research process.
An outcome of this is likely to be an increased emphasis on statistically based sex 鈥渄ifferences鈥�, which may be misinterpreted as evidence of the kind of non-overlapping dichotomies that this latest research contradicts. Many that these statistical categories are at best fallacious and at worst possibly harmful.
This is a controversial area and can lead to . But the latest data must make neuroscience researchers how they design and interpret their research, the conclusions they draw and importantly how they are communicated.
Continuing to think in terms of simple male-female dichotomies is flying in the face of the evidence and will lead to poor research and misleading findings. To paraphrase the title of a key , we are all from Earth.
Gina Rippon is a professor of cognitive neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham, UK
(Image: Aston Brain Centre, Aston University)
Read more: 鈥淪cans prove there鈥檚 no such thing as a 鈥榤ale鈥� or 鈥榝emale鈥� brain鈥�
