This is a comment by Web on the post “Why Are Men and Women So Different?“
“I’ll just post some of what I learned. I don’t have my sources on me, so you don’t have to believe me.
- The connection between the hemispheres of the brain is more complex than it’s often given credit for. By having a smaller corpus callosum (CC from here on), it reduces the bandwidth BETWEEN the hemispheres. Not the connection to only ONE hemisphere.
“Such effects of this are the fact that logic and emotion coexist, but don’t intertwine, and includes outward expression of inner feelings. BOTH sides are used, but they work more independently of each other.
“When raising young boys, the CC mass difference between genders is relatively small (still smaller in boys) but the boys’ CC is more easily damaged, possibly because of the male-female transition that has to occur in boys. This was done in a blind test, where one of the groups displayed more physical impact from emotional distress, a group which they said ‘needed special attention during early development.’ This ended up being the group of boys.
“Now look at how we traditionally raise boys. We tell them to toughen up while giving the girl kisses and band-aids. They say this blatant gender dichotomy of treatment manifests itself similar to neglect. ‘My sister is getting love and affection. What is the matter with me?’ He learns that people don’t respect him if they have to sympathize with him, and it teaches him distrust and less sympathy towards others.
“Now jump ahead in the boy’s timeline. It’s been shown in MRI tests and other brain scans that a man’s emotional centers light up notably more than women’s do for the same emotions. Possibly from bottling it up? Possibly from the brain compensating for a smaller CC? I don’t think that’s clear yet to them.
- Multitasking? Yes, I believe women are more capable of ‘multitasking’ in general. Multitasking in this sense quickly shifting focus to various tasks. You can’t REALLY multitask in the true sense, because the Prefrontal cortex only really works on one set of information at a time.
“But please remember to mention the Male equivalent. This stuff doesn’t just ‘disappear’.
“Men have quick and powerful single-tasking, involving focus-abundance. That is, sticking to one tasks for intense amounts of time. This also includes spacial self-perception. The brain has the natural ability to incorporate tools into your personal spacial awareness. It treats tools as part of the body after a while. For guys, thanks to powerful single-tasking, this change happens more quickly.
- If you want another difference, look into how women think in abstract, algebraic terms, and men think in geometric, spacial terms.”
Photo credit: Flickr / cheetah100
The comment is 100% true.
I can tell you from my exposure to hundreds of abuse victims, their status as such extinguishes all they hope for. Its a natural reason behind secrecy.
The brain does not have logic on one side and emotion on the other side. Both types of processing are bilateral. So, CC volume is irrelevant to the balance between emotion-driven vs. logic-driven behavior. Besides, our logic and our processing of emotions like anger and aggression and sadness and joy are not as separate as we like to think. Basically, all humans kind of suck at logic unless we make a conscious, focused effort. Anyway, the tiny difference in CC size only shows up if you average across a huge number of people. Also, take a physics class or look… Read more »