2022-05-14 14:27:02
This week we are going to talk about a subject that is still very topical, not only scientific, but also social: the differences between men and women, in particular, the differences regarding the management of the information received in life experiences and the emotions and memories that this information arouses.
About twenty years ago I spoke about this topic in an article in which I related some interesting experiments carried out with 12 male and female volunteers who donated their brains to science for a few hours, which made it possible to study their activity. The study illustrates quite well, in addition, the operation of science; how it issues reasonable hypotheses about the observed facts and, based on these hypotheses, tries to get new observations that confirm or deny them. This is important, because we must not forget that science is not only the knowledge that it acquires about the world that surrounds us, but also, above all, the valid procedure that must be used to obtain said knowledge: the scientific method.
Here you can read what I wrote on the subject four decades ago
As we can see, the study obtained evidence that, although it supported the cognitive style hypothesis, did not invalidate the affective intensity hypothesis. It seems, therefore, that the differences between the functioning of the brains of men and women are real and may be due to at least the two causes studied, affective intensity and cognitive style.
However, this apparent discovery does not explain why women and men suffer from different affective intensity, and also from different cognitive styles. What causes underlie these differences?
The subject has been studied quite intensively in the last two decades. To get an idea, it is enough to consider that in 2001 the Pubmed database, which stores the biomedical publications carried out throughout the world, included the publication of 456 articles related to brain differences between the sexes. The number of studies has been constantly increasing so that, in the year 2021, twenty years later, the scientific articles published on this subject were 2,571. Until May 12, 2022, the date on which I record this program, 948 studies have already been published, so it is possible that the previous figure will be exceeded this year.
What have these studies discovered? Obviously, we cannot explain here everything that they have revealed, but we can say that the studies confirm that the differences between men and women extend not only to the emotional aspect, but also to other cognitive aspects, such as attention or unrelated memory. with emotions, or susceptibility to anxiety or depression. The X chromosome has also been found to have a major effect on these differences, including on the fine anatomy of the brain, as might be expected. Likewise, differences have been discovered due to epigenetic mechanisms, that is, to different chemical modifications of the ADN of brain cells that impact gene function, ultimately leading to differences in brain function.
In summary, we can affirm that the cognitive differences between men and women are varied in their quality, and also vary in their intensity. Some studies have also indicated that these differences, as should no longer surprise anyone, have emerged throughout the evolution of our species, and should therefore exert, or at least have exerted, some effect on our survival and success. evolutionary. Probably, each sex has played an unconscious, involuntary role in this, which it probably continues to play today. Therefore, I believe that understanding these differences, and learning to channel them, is important. Accepting the differences between men and women that science reveals to us is not going against equality, but rather, on the contrary, favoring it, because, in my humble opinion, I think that equality is not achieved by insisting on ignoring the differences that nature has imposed on us, but by striving to achieve the conditions that make us all, men and women, equally happy, despite our differences.
(Jorge Laborda 05/14/2022)
Works by Jorge Laborda.
Your defenses against coronavirus
Your defenses against coronavirus
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Kilo of Science Volume XII eBook
Kilo of Science Volume XII Paper
Kilo of Science Volume I. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume II. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume III. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IV. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume V. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VI. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VIII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IX. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume X. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume XI. Jorge Laborda
Matrix of homeopathy
Chained circumstances. Ed.Lulu
Chained circumstances. Amazon
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The thousand and one bases of ADN and other science stories
Adenius Fidelius
The intelligence funnel and other essays
The gods have been cloned
#Cienciaes.com #Emotions #sex #memory