What distinguishes the female brain?

Louann Brizendine shows up for the interview with a plastic brain that he hid among the clothes in the suitcase that he brought from San Francisco. She serves him to support his explanation of what makes a woman a woman (and not a man).

It is a woman’s brain, because the anterior cingulate cortex, the prefrontal cortex, the insula, and the hippocampus are highly developed. the areas of the brain that are responsible for weighing options, processing emotions, activating visceral feelings, and recording moments with a strong emotional charge in memory.

She knows him well. She has been studying it for years; is author of the female brain (RBA-Comprehensive Edition), a book in which the woman’s brain is the protagonist. Her resume is impressive. Louann Brizendine is degree in Neurobiology from the University of Berkeley in Medicine by that of Yale and in Psychiatry for that of Harvard.

Her specialty is hormones and how they influence a woman’s physical and mental health. In 1994 she founded the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic, from where she advises and treats women of all ages suffering from mood or sexuality related disorders.

This therapeutic work is combined with the teachingthe investigation and their obligations as mother.

In her book, she argues that the structure of the female brain and its hormonal functioning determine how women think, what they value, how they communicate and who they love.

Men and women: different realities

–What led you to be interested in the female brain?
–Until recently, most studies on the human brain were done with men because scientists did not want the menstrual woman’s hormones to interfere with the data or that she could become pregnant during the study. In animals they have been studied a little more, but in humans it is something very recent. To this is added that until recently the brain could only be observed when someone died. Now, with new technologies, we can see which areas of the brain are activated while someone is acting, in real time.

– Is there a feminine reality different from the masculine?
–For the most part, the brains of men and women are very similar, but each has its own hormonal reality. Hormones don’t make us who we are, but they influence how we feel and our mood. In addition, they are responsible for subtle neurological differences in the formation of brain circuits, the result of the evolution of millions of years, which guide our impulses and influence the vision we have of the world and how we relate to it.

What are those subtle differences?
–They are related to aspects such as reproduction, sexuality and the desire to protect the young while they do not know how to fend for themselves, and they are already gestating in the fetus. In the first eight weeks of life, the new being grows by default with female brain circuits, but by the eighth week the boys’ testicles release torrents of testosterone that transform those circuits into male ones.

–And how do you transform them into masculine?
–Modifying the size of some areas of the brain. The one that controls sexual desire, for example, doubles in children. The centers of aggression also grow. In girls, on the other hand, the brain cells develop more connections in the centers of communication and observation, as well as in the areas that are responsible for processing emotion .

How does this affect our way of being?
–Girls, for example, tend to talk more and read other people’s facial expressions better. Boys have more fun fighting and are more likely to fight. The fact that the center of sexual desire is more developed in men also leads him to think about sex more often than women.

“Hormones don’t make us who we are, but they do guide our impulses and relationship with the world.”

Brain development in men and women

–And where is education in all this?
–A famous neurologist at the University of California discovered about 15 years ago that if a monkey’s index fingers become blocked, the areas of the brain that control the movement of those fingers become activated within a period of only two weeks. to move the middle fingers. The cerebral circuits are modified, then, from a change produced in the environment. The same thing happens in humans. Every second that passes our circuits are modified based on external aspects, such as education and culture. Education and culture are not separate from biology. They collaborate with it by making us who we are, modifying the brain circuits that lead us to behave in one way or another.

–Can a girl then be educated to be more or less “feminine”?
–I belong to one of the first generations of the feminist movement at the University of Berkeley. We had all proposed to give our children a non-sexist education, giving them, for example, neutral toys. We wanted them to be sensitive, emotional… I gave mine a Barbie doll, but she tore off her legs to use as harpoons. And I was not the only one who encountered similar things. What I want to get at is that, although children can be influenced by giving them a broad education that makes them more open-minded, behaviors appropriate to their sex always end up appearing in children’s play.

-For example?
–Girls love to play roles (doctors and patients, teachers and students…) and boys tend to be inclined towards anything that involves fighting.

–It sounds a bit cliché: girls will always be girls and boys will be boys… Aren’t you worried about reinforcing stereotypes against which women have been fighting for years?
–In stereotypes there is a nucleus of truth. Experience shows that men and women can be equally intelligent and capable of performing any job… I think that this phase in which stereotypes were used to discriminate, to say that you can or cannot do something because you are a woman, it is or should be overtaken So I’m not concerned with acknowledging the biological basis of some stereotypes; what interests me is recognizing the biological reality of women and seeing how it influences the way they act and feel.

–Does the development of emotional intelligence follow different paths in men and women?
–Emotions form an important part of education in both men and women, but there are some differences. Girls pay much more attention to emotional details and remember them better; in fact, the area of ​​the brain in charge of these functions (the hippocampus) is larger in them. Criminologists have known this for a long time: the woman remembers the details of a crime better.

“Can that make us more spiteful?”
“We still don’t know exactly what that ability entails. What we do know is that women pay more attention to the emotional aspects of their lives and are better at interpreting what other people are feeling by their expression or tone of voice. It has been proven, for example, that both men and women are able to identify sadness from a clearly sad face with 90% accuracy. But when it comes to identifying it in a face with a less pronounced sad expression, the accuracy of women remains at 90% and that of men falls to 40%. We speak, of course, of the average. In general, it is slightly more difficult for men than for women to capture and remember details with an emotional component, but as with everything there are exceptions and there are many men (for example, psychologists, journalists…) with great sensitivity in this area. sense.

Female Brain Strengths: Communication, Intuition, and Attention to Detail

– What are the strengths and weaknesses of the female brain?
–Well, the strong point of the female brain, which many men don’t know about, is precisely that ability, somewhat more refined than in the male sex, to read faces and capture emotional nuances. This strong point has its counterpart, so it can be seen at the same time as a weak point, and it leads to many misunderstandings: the fact that women are so sensitive to nuances and sometimes react to what they catch makes them often I accused her of being too touchy.

–Does that ability make the woman more aware of what others feel?
–Of what they feel and their assessment. Women, having a larger part of the brain dedicated to observation, learn from childhood to analyze others and know if they approve of their behavior.

–It seems the perfect combination to make us more insecure…
-Not necessarily. This sensitivity to what others may think or feel can be seen as something positive, as something useful, since it allows one to quickly adapt one’s behavior to the situations that arise and act correctly. But it can also make you suffer. There has to be a balance. The woman always seeks feedback and, if the feedback is positive, everything goes well, but if it is negative, it can affect her self-esteem.

Doesn’t that happen to men too?
–Yes, but to a lesser degree, because not being able to capture so many nuances, they don’t analyze the reactions as much as women do and give that assessment less importance.

–Do hormonal fluctuations affect women more?
–Actually, hardly any studies have been done on how hormonal changes affect men, so we can’t make that kind of comparison. No money is being invested in it, although future neuroscientists should perhaps take care of it… They have been studied in women and today we know that they affect many aspects and, among them, our state of mind. In the two days before ovulation and during the first two weeks of the cycle, when estrogen is high, we are more into flirting, thinking more about sex, even talking more; two days before the period, on the other hand, by raising progesterone and lowering estrogen, we become more irascible, more susceptible…

–And we have no choice but to accept it?
–Being aware of how these fluctuations affect us is what will allow us to be more ourselves and relativize some things. If one day you feel, for example, that you want to quit your job, you can tell yourself: “Well, I’m going to wait a couple of days before making the decision in case it’s the hormones that make me see it that way.”

“Women pay more attention to the emotional aspects of their lives and are better able to interpret what others are feeling by their expression or tone of voice.”

–I said before that one of the most developed parts of the female brain is the one that manages communication skills. Some studies maintain that in general women speak more than men. Is it so?
–Throughout history and in all cultures, women have talked a lot among themselves. Gossip, gossip, is part of what connects women with each other and serves to transmit important social information for group cohesion. It doesn’t have to be seen as a negative. Discuss emotional and social details…