The female brain

Way back in February I read from brain wave that there's a new book called "the Female Brain" due to be published in August. Today I found from news it's out now. This book is written by a scientist called Louann Brizendine.

In her new book, "The Female Brain," Brizendine says that women are better than men at remembering the details of emotional events because their brains are structurally and chemically different. This is not essentialist malarkey; scientists have studied living, thinking female (and male) brains with PET and MRI scans. Simply put, the hippocampus -- site of emotions and memory formation -- is larger in women, as are the brain areas for language. Men, on the other hand, have larger brain centers for action and aggression. (They also have 2 1/2 times the brain space devoted to the sexual drive, according to Brizendine.) Much of these variances start in utero, during the eighth week of pregnancy, when the then-female brain will either receive a testosterone surge or not. The screenwriters of "Click," then, weren't so far off the mark.

So there are fundamental differences in the brains between men and women. Though it's more or less a cliché. It's still interesting for me to know the scientific facts behind this well known phenomenon. However the reviewer gave this book quiet merciless critiques.

Brizendine sounds surprisingly naive elsewhere in the book as well. After speculating that, like prairie voles, some men may have a gene sequence for monogamy, Brizendine delivers this scoop: "We now know women cheat, too." One wonders how many studies Brizendine had to sift through before coming to this conclusion. And while it's fascinating to learn why women's brains get in their way of having round-the-clock sex, do we really need a neuropsychiatrist to tell us that a woman won't have sex with her partner while she's angry at him?

For a scientist, Brizendine relies heavily on anecdotes. Even though she says that child development is "inextricably both" nature and nurture, she starts Chapter 1 with a vivid story of a patient who gave her 3-year-old daughter a toy fire truck instead of a doll. One afternoon, the patient walks into her child's room to find her rocking the truck and saying, "Don't worry, little truckie, everything will be all right." Though this is hardly proof that the girl's brain was hardwired for nurturing -- we don't know what other environmental influences (television, friends, babysitters, other female figures) may have shaped her -- it serves to support Brizendine's point that "there is no unisex brain.

As far as a scientific book is concerned, we might expect more scientific information from this book. However I was talking with my publisher friends about how publishers "wrap" and promote publishing nowadays. Since lots of readers don't really "think" critically, the publishers try to draw attentions by putting some sensational anecdotes in front of readers' faces. I've been reading several popular scientific books with similar layout. I wonder whether it's because of the publisher or the writer so the book doesn't present so much scientific arguments and facts. I need to think seriously whether to spend money on that book or not now. ^^