He/She: Brains of men and women hard-wired different because of hormones, genes

[In the past, studying sex-based differences in the brain] was not a universally popular idea. The neuroscience community had largely considered any observed sex-associated differences in cognition and behavior in humans to be due to the effects of cultural influences.

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[But according to Diane Halpern, a professor emerita of psychology at Claremont McKenna College,] there is too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore.

For one thing, the animal-research findings resonated with sex-based differences ascribed to people. These findings continue to accrue. In a study of 34 rhesus monkeys, for example, males strongly preferred toys with wheels over plush toys, whereas females found plush toys likable.

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But why are men’s and women’s brains different? One big reason is that, for much of their lifetimes, women and men have different fuel additives running through their tanks: the sex-steroid hormones.

Scientists also routinely acknowledge that the presence or absence of a single DNA base pair can make a medically important difference. What about an entire chromosome? Every cell in a man’s body (including his brain) has a slightly different set of functioning ​sex-​chromosome genes from those operating in a woman’s.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Two minds