Chapter II. A woman’s intelligence and/or beauty
There are brains and then there are brains, or woman is no comrade to man
The morphological differences (body built, gait) between ‘normal’ men and women are evident, as they say, to the naked eye. The behavioral differences are also obvious: anyone can tell you about it. For example, when my wife and I make our daily mandatory six-mile walk, to me it is nothing but physical exercise – something to do to stay healthy. My wife, on the other hand, gets distracted all the time: by blackberries or some other berries, or by a squirrel, or by the sunset. I understand that for her it cannot be otherwise. Another example: without seeing the driver’s face, I can always tell with certainty who is driving a given car: a man or a woman. Their types of thinking and behavior are different; it is the difference between the rational and the irrational. This, however, is already a proposition that needs to be proved. These differences are laid down by nature, and they manifest themselves through the very structure of the male and the female brains, through the character of the neurons’ functioning.
Psychologists have been ‘storming’ the brain since the second half of the 19th century; however, the greatest advances in this area started taking shape in the 1990s, when new technologies were introduced, for example, positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI); the scientists who developed these two were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2003. The use of these devices produced experimental proof for many speculative guesses that had been voiced for close to a hundred years. Here are some of the results that confirm the differences in the functioning of the male and the female brains.
In the course of their experiments, scientists at the University of California (Irvine) found that sad occasions (funerals, divorces) caused the front part of the brain to become excited in both men and women, but the intensity of this excitement was eight times higher in women. This explains the long-known fact that men do not take sad events as close to heart as women do. Women’s super-reaction to negative events leads them into depression twice as often as men. In this state, the nervous system is passive, almost lethargic. Perhaps this passivity is overcompensation for hyperactivity at the time of experiencing sad events.
These same scientists determined that students with high mathematical abilities exhibit the greatest intensity of neuron operation in the temple areas of the brain – something that students with average mathematical abilities don’t have. In other words, a correlation was discovered between high mathematical abilities and the intensity of neuron operation in the temple parts of the brain. However, mathematically gifted female students exhibited lower activity in these parts of the brain than mathematically gifted male students, although their test results were comparable. This is evidence that female students use their brains more efficiently than gifted male students.
However, when one looks at natural sciences as a whole, tests showed that in this area boys surpass girls in the proportion of seven to one, while girl surpass boys in the understanding of texts. Boys also proved to be strong in spatial orienting (for example, reading maps). This is probably why there are so many architects and chess players among men (this is historically connected to the art of hunting, which requires good spatial orienting).
In a more complex experiment – "think of nothing" – it was discovered that in the ‘non-thinking’ male brain the greatest activity of neurons is found in their temporal limbic system. This evolutionary ancient region controls emotions linked to action, especially aggression. This part of the brain is sometimes called “reptile.”
In female brains in the state "think of nothing," neurons become excited in the cingulated gyrus, an evolutionary recent region that controls complex expressions of emotions, such as showing anger by looks, not punches.
It has been known for over a hundred years that the left hemisphere controls the human being’s verbal abilities (speech, reading, writing, capacity for languages), while the right one is responsible for emotions. Experiments show that when the task is to read out loud some verses or some meaningless words, in the male brain the front lower part of the left hemisphere becomes excited. In the female brain, part of the right hemisphere becomes excited as well. That is, in women both hemispheres work simultaneously, while in men the hemispheres operate alternately, depending on the task, with the left hemisphere being predominant on the whole (it is also the one responsible for the intellect, or logical thinking).
This type of thinking explains the long known phenomenon: men are able to concentrate more strongly on one goal, without being distracted by outside ‘noises.’ The simultaneous working of the two hemispheres determines women’s irrational type of thinking, in which emotional surges knock her off the way to the strategic goal. A woman is always ‘in the process’ of reaching some goal – not one but many goals, in fact – which are in themselves not all that important to her. To her the ‘noises,’ the details are more important. This is precisely why men are strong in strategy, women are strong in tactics; men are strong in fundamental research (where the goal is deep and remote), women – in applied science.
There are exceptions, though; some women have their hemispheres working male-style, i.e. alternately. The female version (simultaneous work of the hemispheres) in men is much more rare. This is why girls who play with boys’ toys are not as rare as the opposite version. From this also stems the more frequent phenomenon of manlike women who seek to be emancipated, to master male professions.
So why do these hemispheres operate so differently in men and in women? As long ago as 1880, English surgeon James Crichton-Browne reported slight differences in the brain anatomy of men and women–a slightly larger gaggle of neurons here on one sex, and there in the other. But by far the most frequent finding through the years has been that the bundle of nerve cells through which the left side of the brain talks and listens to the right—it's called the corpus callosum—is larger in women than in men. In perhaps the best study of this kind, in 1991 UCLA neuro-endocrinologists Roger Gorski and Laura Allen examined 146 brains from cadavers and found that the back part of women's callosum is up to 23 percent bigger than men's. This led to the conclusion that the left and right parts of the male brain likely don’t know what the other one is doing, while women have the nonstop process of neuron chitchat between the hemispheres. If the female brain is a model of wholeness (adjacent-rooms apartment), then the male brain is like a house divided into sections (separate rooms). It becomes clear hence that women’s linguistic abilities are due to the fact that the analytical left part is constantly enriched by the emotional right part.
However, there is a problem here, unresolved as yet. A large corpus callosum only makes sense when it has a large number of neurons – cells responsible for communication. It is not known to this day whether the corpus callosum in women has more neurons than that in men.
Speaking of the brain as a whole, in men it is ‘weightier’ and bigger in size (due to the proportion of brain mass to body mass), but women have more neurons, and 11% of them are concentrated in the two layers of the cortex’ cerebral part that are responsible for linguistics and for recognition of melody and tone of voice. Subsequent research showed that women have brain cell density in certain zones of the frontal lobe that is 15% higher than in men.[1]
In summary form, the identified differences between male and female brains can be grouped in three blocks presented in the following table:
[1] Nonetheless, part of English scientists are inclined to believe that men’s greater brain volume (10% greater than women’s on average) predetermines a higher level of intellect in men compared to women. This conclusion was made based on a survey of 24,000 students, conducted by Paul Irving (the University of Manchester) and Richard Lynn (the University in Ulster). – See The Times, August 25, 2005, 9.
On Love, Family, and the State
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)