Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: forbes@aries.scs.uiuc.EDU (Jeff Forbes) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: physiological differences between male and female brains Summary: Phrenology is not brain topology. Message-ID: <1991Mar13.210325.16388@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 14 Mar 91 21:15:55 GMT References: <1991Mar8.034313.29112@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <18425@cs.utexas.edu> Organization: School of Chemical Sciences, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Lines: 34 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: glacier.ics.uci.edu In article <18425@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.EDU (Russell Turpin) writes: >----- >In article <1991Mar8.034313.29112@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> forbes@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Jeff Forbes) writes: >> According to _Evolution of the Vertebrate Brain_, the adult human >> female brain (taking into account body height) is on the average 200 >> grams less than that of the adult human male brain, using the same >> scaling. What does this mean? Possibly nothing more than another odd >> medical statistic. > >You got it. > >There is quite a bit of variation in cranium shape, including >overall size, overall shape (thus, some heads are egg-shaped, >some more round, some people have high foreheads, etc), and also >in the particular bumps and dents in each skull. Despite the >popularity of phrenology in the previous century, which found >the reason for everything from criminal behavior to the >particular nature of women (!) in the shape of the skull, there >is no evidence that skull shape (and hence, brain size) has any >correlation with intelligence, cognitive abilities, character, or >personality. (The exception is when a particular skull feature >indicates some other problem. The data I quoted was not from a phrenology study. The brain mass was determined after autopsy, by weighing it. You cannot determine brain mass from the shape of the skull, but the mass may be infered from the internal volume assuming constant tissue density, which may not be appropriate. Of course, there is no substitute for actually making the measurement. Jeff Forbes "....I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Edison