More Science: Men Have 6.5 Times The Gray Matter As Women

And yet, supposedly, this makes no difference as regards intelligence. Or basic intelligence -- "we are just differently-intelligent," the article says, in an Up With People! sort of happyscience way.

Women have ten times the "white matter" that men do... but then, I've never heard anyone's smarts being attributed to his "white matter."

Men and women do think differently, at least where the anatomy of the brain is concerned, according to a new study.

The brain is made primarily of two different types of tissue, called gray matter and white matter. This new research reveals that men think more with their gray matter, and women think more with white. Researchers stressed that just because the two sexes think differently, this does not affect intellectual performance.

Psychology professor Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine led the research along with colleagues from the University of New Mexico. Their findings show that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.

"These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," said Haier, adding that, "by pinpointing these gender-based intelligence areas, the study has the potential to aid research on dementia and other cognitive-impairment diseases in the brain."

The results are detailed in the online version of the journal NeuroImage.

In human brains, gray matter represents information processing centers, whereas white matter works to network these processing centers.

The results from this study may help explain why men and women excel at different types of tasks, said co-author and neuropsychologist Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico. For example, men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localized processing, such as mathematics, Jung said, while women are better at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language skills.

Scientists find it very interesting that while men and women use two very different activity centers and neurological pathways, men and women perform equally well on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as intelligence tests.

Okay, I'd do the "Shoe Cortex" jand "Cute Handbag Lobe" jokes for the thousandth time, but they were hack the first time I did them.

Thanks to The Shadow.

posted by Ace at 12:05 PM

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