Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!hal!nic.MR.NET!xanth!mcnc!ecsvax!skyler From: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Patricia Roberts) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Women and Brains Summary: Two articles Message-ID: <5761@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 7 Nov 88 06:13:44 GMT Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service Lines: 38 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu From: chase@orc.olivetti.com (David Chase) > On the subject of brain "wiring", anybody have statistics on the occurrence of epilepsy in each sex? With different "bandwidth" between the hemispheres, I would expect the sexes to show a notable asymmetry. You'd have to be careful with these figures, because (I think) epilepsy is usually a side-effect of something else; a stroke, a brain tumor, brain surgery, or a blow to the head. It also can run in families; I don't know much about that. It is also more common in seriously retarded children. Drug withdrawal can also produces seizures that are very similar to epileptic seizures, though they eventually go away. It also happens that someone will have one seizure in their adolesence, do the standard treatment, and never have another. Take away all that, and I'm not sure you'd have much of a sample left. I'm speaking from experience and curiosity -- I whacked my head on some pavement pretty hard 11 years ago, had some seizures immediately afterwards, and spent three years taking Dilantin. During that time I met quite a few people who were taking Dilantin, talked to several neurologists, and read what I could find. David ================================================================== From: Alan J Rosenthal References: <5688@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <5715@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> <5719@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Organization: University of Toronto djk@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Doris J. Karlson) writes: >They found that the bundle of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the >brain is consistently and significantly thicker in females than in males. Mental developments can affect the physical structure of the brain. So this is not evidence for built-in differences as opposed to cultural influences, as I believe it was intended to be. ajr