More Differences Between Brains of Men and Women
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered “striking” differences between men and women in a part of the brain linked with ability to estimate time, judge speed, visualize things three-dimensionally and solve mathematical problems.
The differences, the researchers say, may underlie well-known trends that vary by sex, such as the fact that more men than women are architects, mathematicians and race-car drivers.
In a study reported this week in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the researchers show that a brain region called the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) is significantly larger overall in men than in women. The area is part of the cerebral cortex and appears on both sides of the brain just above ear-level.
Also, there’s a symmetry difference, with men having a larger left IPL than right. in women in the study, it’s the right IPL that’s somewhat larger, though the difference between the two sides of the brain is less obvious than in men, says psychiatrist Godfrey Pearlson, M.D., who headed the project.
“This is the same part of Albert Einstein’s brain that was particularly large,” says Pearlson, “Scientists have noticed this region is also larger in the postmortem brains of other physicists and mathematicians.”
In the study, researchers reviewed MRI-scans of the brains of 15 closely matched men and women. They used new computer software created by Hopkins psychiatrist Patrick Barta, M.D., Ph.D. to compare overall IRL volume by gender. The software lets scientists highlight the IRL by “painting” it in on computer images of each subject’s brain; it then calculates a highly accurate volume.
Researchers also compared IRL volumes on the left and the right sides of the brain. After allowances for men’s larger overall head and brain size, men had roughly 6 percent more IRL tissue than women.
“The inferior parietal lobule is far more developed in people than in animals and has evolved relatively recently,” says Pearlson. It allows the brain to process information from senses such as vision and touch, and enables the sort of thinking involved in selective attention and perception.
Studies link the right IRL with a working memory of spatial relationships, the ability to sense relationships between body parts and awareness of a person’s own affect or feelings. The left IPL, Pearlson says, is more involved in perception, such as judjing how fast something is moving, estimating time and having the ability to mentally rotate 3-D figures.
“To say this means mean are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification,” says Pearlson. “It’s easy to find women who are fantastic at math and physics and men who excel in language skills. Only when we look at very large populations and look for slight but significant trends do we see the generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but there’s also a grain of truth, revealed through the brain structure, that we think underlies some of the ways people characterize the sexes.”
Earlier research by Pearlson showed that two crucial language areas in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain were significantly larger in women, perhaps explaining their advantage in language-associated thought.
大腦結(jié)構(gòu)，男女有別
約翰斯·霍普金斯大學(xué)的科學(xué)家們已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)，在大腦中與估算時(shí)間、判斷速度、想象三維事物和解數(shù)學(xué)題等能力有關(guān)的部位，男女之間有著“驚人的”差異。
研究人員說(shuō)，這種差異可能形成眾所周知的男女有別的現(xiàn)象，例如建筑師、教學(xué)家和賽車選手男性多于女性這一事實(shí)。
在本周的《大腦皮層》雜志上報(bào)道的一項(xiàng)研究中，研究人員說(shuō)明一個(gè)叫做下頂葉（IRL）的大腦部位，就總體來(lái)說(shuō)，男性的比性的要大得多。該部位屬大腦皮層，正好位于耳朵上方大腦兩側(cè)。
此外，還存在著一種對(duì)稱的差異，男性的左下頂葉大于右下頂葉。領(lǐng)導(dǎo)這項(xiàng)研究的精神病學(xué)家、醫(yī)學(xué)博士戈弗雷·皮爾遜說(shuō)，研究表明，女性的右下頂葉略微大一些，盡管女性大腦兩邊的這種差異沒(méi)有男性的那么明顯。
皮爾遜說(shuō)：“這個(gè)部位與艾爾伯特·愛(ài)因斯坦大腦中那個(gè)特別大的部位是同一部位?？茖W(xué)家們已經(jīng)注意到，尸體解剖表明，其他物理學(xué)家和數(shù)學(xué)家的大腦也是這個(gè)部位比較大一些?！?BR> 研究人員在研究中觀察了15個(gè)幾乎不相上下的男女的大腦磁共振成像掃描圖。他們使用的是霍普金斯大學(xué)精神病學(xué)家、醫(yī)學(xué)博士兼哲學(xué)博士帕特里克·巴塔發(fā)明的新的電腦軟件，以便大體上比較男性和女性的下頂葉的體積。這種軟件能使科學(xué)家在每個(gè)受試者大腦的計(jì)算機(jī)圖像上將下頂葉“涂上顏色”以使其凸現(xiàn)出來(lái)；然后它再高度精確地計(jì)算出其體積。
研究人員還比較了大腦左右兩側(cè)的下頂葉體積。在考慮到男性頭部和大腦總體上較大的因素后，發(fā)現(xiàn)男性的下頂葉組織比女性的大約多6%。
皮爾遜說(shuō)：“人類的下頂葉比動(dòng)物的要發(fā)達(dá)得多，而且是在相當(dāng)晚的近期才進(jìn)化而來(lái)的。”下頂葉使大腦能夠處理從諸如視覺(jué)和觸覺(jué)等感官傳來(lái)的信息，并使涉及有選擇性集中注意和知覺(jué)之類的思維活動(dòng)得以進(jìn)行。
研究報(bào)告表明，右下頂葉與對(duì)空間關(guān)系的實(shí)用記憶力、感知人體各部位相互關(guān)系的能力和對(duì)自我的自覺(jué)感情或感覺(jué)的意識(shí)有關(guān)。皮爾遜說(shuō)，左下頂葉則更多地涉及知覺(jué)，如判斷某物移動(dòng)的速度、估算時(shí)間以及擁有在大腦中旋轉(zhuǎn)三維圖形的能力。
“如果說(shuō)這意味著男性在某些事情上必然強(qiáng)于女性，那就把事情簡(jiǎn)單化了，”皮爾遜說(shuō)?！鞍l(fā)現(xiàn)精通數(shù)學(xué)及物理的女性和擅長(zhǎng)語(yǔ)言技能的男性是很容易的。只有在大量的人口中進(jìn)行調(diào)查，并找出雖微不足道但有重要意義的趨勢(shì)后，我們才能明白其中規(guī)律性的東西。當(dāng)然有很多例外，但也不乏從大腦結(jié)構(gòu)中顯露出的真理的成分——我們認(rèn)為，這構(gòu)成了人們?cè)谛詣e方面的某些特征?！?BR> 皮爾遜早些時(shí)候的研究表明，女性大腦額葉和顳葉中的兩個(gè)關(guān)鍵的語(yǔ)言區(qū)域比男性的大得多，這也許解釋了為什么女性在與語(yǔ)言有關(guān)的思維方面享有優(yōu)勢(shì)。
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered “striking” differences between men and women in a part of the brain linked with ability to estimate time, judge speed, visualize things three-dimensionally and solve mathematical problems.
The differences, the researchers say, may underlie well-known trends that vary by sex, such as the fact that more men than women are architects, mathematicians and race-car drivers.
In a study reported this week in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the researchers show that a brain region called the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) is significantly larger overall in men than in women. The area is part of the cerebral cortex and appears on both sides of the brain just above ear-level.
Also, there’s a symmetry difference, with men having a larger left IPL than right. in women in the study, it’s the right IPL that’s somewhat larger, though the difference between the two sides of the brain is less obvious than in men, says psychiatrist Godfrey Pearlson, M.D., who headed the project.
“This is the same part of Albert Einstein’s brain that was particularly large,” says Pearlson, “Scientists have noticed this region is also larger in the postmortem brains of other physicists and mathematicians.”
In the study, researchers reviewed MRI-scans of the brains of 15 closely matched men and women. They used new computer software created by Hopkins psychiatrist Patrick Barta, M.D., Ph.D. to compare overall IRL volume by gender. The software lets scientists highlight the IRL by “painting” it in on computer images of each subject’s brain; it then calculates a highly accurate volume.
Researchers also compared IRL volumes on the left and the right sides of the brain. After allowances for men’s larger overall head and brain size, men had roughly 6 percent more IRL tissue than women.
“The inferior parietal lobule is far more developed in people than in animals and has evolved relatively recently,” says Pearlson. It allows the brain to process information from senses such as vision and touch, and enables the sort of thinking involved in selective attention and perception.
Studies link the right IRL with a working memory of spatial relationships, the ability to sense relationships between body parts and awareness of a person’s own affect or feelings. The left IPL, Pearlson says, is more involved in perception, such as judjing how fast something is moving, estimating time and having the ability to mentally rotate 3-D figures.
“To say this means mean are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification,” says Pearlson. “It’s easy to find women who are fantastic at math and physics and men who excel in language skills. Only when we look at very large populations and look for slight but significant trends do we see the generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but there’s also a grain of truth, revealed through the brain structure, that we think underlies some of the ways people characterize the sexes.”
Earlier research by Pearlson showed that two crucial language areas in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain were significantly larger in women, perhaps explaining their advantage in language-associated thought.
大腦結(jié)構(gòu)，男女有別
約翰斯·霍普金斯大學(xué)的科學(xué)家們已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)，在大腦中與估算時(shí)間、判斷速度、想象三維事物和解數(shù)學(xué)題等能力有關(guān)的部位，男女之間有著“驚人的”差異。
研究人員說(shuō)，這種差異可能形成眾所周知的男女有別的現(xiàn)象，例如建筑師、教學(xué)家和賽車選手男性多于女性這一事實(shí)。
在本周的《大腦皮層》雜志上報(bào)道的一項(xiàng)研究中，研究人員說(shuō)明一個(gè)叫做下頂葉（IRL）的大腦部位，就總體來(lái)說(shuō)，男性的比性的要大得多。該部位屬大腦皮層，正好位于耳朵上方大腦兩側(cè)。
此外，還存在著一種對(duì)稱的差異，男性的左下頂葉大于右下頂葉。領(lǐng)導(dǎo)這項(xiàng)研究的精神病學(xué)家、醫(yī)學(xué)博士戈弗雷·皮爾遜說(shuō)，研究表明，女性的右下頂葉略微大一些，盡管女性大腦兩邊的這種差異沒(méi)有男性的那么明顯。
皮爾遜說(shuō)：“這個(gè)部位與艾爾伯特·愛(ài)因斯坦大腦中那個(gè)特別大的部位是同一部位?？茖W(xué)家們已經(jīng)注意到，尸體解剖表明，其他物理學(xué)家和數(shù)學(xué)家的大腦也是這個(gè)部位比較大一些?！?BR> 研究人員在研究中觀察了15個(gè)幾乎不相上下的男女的大腦磁共振成像掃描圖。他們使用的是霍普金斯大學(xué)精神病學(xué)家、醫(yī)學(xué)博士兼哲學(xué)博士帕特里克·巴塔發(fā)明的新的電腦軟件，以便大體上比較男性和女性的下頂葉的體積。這種軟件能使科學(xué)家在每個(gè)受試者大腦的計(jì)算機(jī)圖像上將下頂葉“涂上顏色”以使其凸現(xiàn)出來(lái)；然后它再高度精確地計(jì)算出其體積。
研究人員還比較了大腦左右兩側(cè)的下頂葉體積。在考慮到男性頭部和大腦總體上較大的因素后，發(fā)現(xiàn)男性的下頂葉組織比女性的大約多6%。
皮爾遜說(shuō)：“人類的下頂葉比動(dòng)物的要發(fā)達(dá)得多，而且是在相當(dāng)晚的近期才進(jìn)化而來(lái)的。”下頂葉使大腦能夠處理從諸如視覺(jué)和觸覺(jué)等感官傳來(lái)的信息，并使涉及有選擇性集中注意和知覺(jué)之類的思維活動(dòng)得以進(jìn)行。
研究報(bào)告表明，右下頂葉與對(duì)空間關(guān)系的實(shí)用記憶力、感知人體各部位相互關(guān)系的能力和對(duì)自我的自覺(jué)感情或感覺(jué)的意識(shí)有關(guān)。皮爾遜說(shuō)，左下頂葉則更多地涉及知覺(jué)，如判斷某物移動(dòng)的速度、估算時(shí)間以及擁有在大腦中旋轉(zhuǎn)三維圖形的能力。
“如果說(shuō)這意味著男性在某些事情上必然強(qiáng)于女性，那就把事情簡(jiǎn)單化了，”皮爾遜說(shuō)?！鞍l(fā)現(xiàn)精通數(shù)學(xué)及物理的女性和擅長(zhǎng)語(yǔ)言技能的男性是很容易的。只有在大量的人口中進(jìn)行調(diào)查，并找出雖微不足道但有重要意義的趨勢(shì)后，我們才能明白其中規(guī)律性的東西。當(dāng)然有很多例外，但也不乏從大腦結(jié)構(gòu)中顯露出的真理的成分——我們認(rèn)為，這構(gòu)成了人們?cè)谛詣e方面的某些特征?！?BR> 皮爾遜早些時(shí)候的研究表明，女性大腦額葉和顳葉中的兩個(gè)關(guān)鍵的語(yǔ)言區(qū)域比男性的大得多，這也許解釋了為什么女性在與語(yǔ)言有關(guān)的思維方面享有優(yōu)勢(shì)。