The Male and Female Brain

The Male and Female Brain

It is proven that the male and female brains differ, but can one prove that it affects the behavior? Many scientists would agree that ones behavior is determined by his/her gender. Although others are convinced that social conditioning is the cause for the differences between the male and female, it is very unlikely that biological differences play no role in behavior. The male and female brains differ not only by how they work, but also on the size. For example, Natalie Angier and Kenneth Chang, neuroscientists, have shown that the women's brain is about 10 percent smaller than the male's, on average, even after accounting for women's comparatively smaller body size. Three brain differences that affect ones behavior are the limbic size, the corpus collosum size, and the amount of gray and white matter.

Current research has demonstrated that females, on average, have a larger deep limbic system than males. Due to the larger limbic brain, woman are more in touch with their feelings, they are generally better to express their feelings than men ("Male-Female Brain Differences"). Women are the primary care takers for children because of their strong ability to be connected and bond well with others. Containing a larger limbic system also leaves a female more likely to become depressed. As stated in "Male-Female Difference", women attempt suicide three times more than men, but men actually succeed three times more than women. This happens because men use more violent means of killing themselves (women tend to use over doses with pills, while men tend to either shoot or hang themselves), and men are generally less connected to others than are women. Such disconnections from others increase the risk of complete suicides.

Another brain difference is that the corpus collosum tends to be larger in the woman's brain. Having a larger corpus collosum gives women the ability to transfer data between the right and left sides of her brain. While women have greater access to both sides, men mostly rely on the left side of the brain. Because women are able to use both sides of the brain, they tend to be better with language then the male. Another advantage women have over men is if a woman has a stroke in the left front side of the brain, she would be able to more fully recover than a male because of their greater use of both sides (Reville).

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