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Originally Posted by az420sel
Asymmetry differs between men and momen. Girl’s brains don’t develop the right side specificity for nonverbal processes as early as boys do. Girls’ brains thus retain plasticity, or the ability to change, for longer than boys’ brains do. This is supported by the greater ability to transfer language abilities to the right hemisphere after damage to the left side of the brain. This extended plasticity also may account for less incidences of disorders related to left-hemisphere dysfunction, e.g. autism.
Female brains seem to have a lesser degree of specialisation than males, which many have attributed to the larger corpus callosum in females, connecting the two hemispheres. There also seems generally to be less initial development of the brain into two specialised halves in females. Tests on different cognitive abilities consistently show that females are better at verbal fluency, perceptual speed and mathematical calculations, whilst males are better at mathematical reasoning, spatial relationships and target directed motor tasks. These differences are unlikely to be related to any kind of social conditioning, and more likely to reflect physical differences between the brains of men and women.
Simon Baron-Cohen, Chair of Psychology at Cambridge University
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My first degree is in Linguistics, and I specialized in language acquisition and the brain.
I studied much of what is quoted above, and some of it is a distant memory, but in simpler terms, the brain is best thought of as two completely separate brains (left and right), that are connected via the "corpus callosum". The corpus callosum can be easier thought of, in automotive terms, as a wiring harness, with a ton of wires that interconnect the two halves.
While women's brains are smaller than men's, even adjusted for their size, female brains have twice as many connections between the brains, and this appears to be a great advantage in many, many areas.
When you look at brain scans when doing any mental activity, women use both sides of the brains equally when doing anything, i.e. for speech, reasoning, analyzing, etc.
I suppose this explains why women rarely have speech disorders like men do. It also explains why even after suffering a stroke, women rarely lose the ability to speak, while men frequently do.
On the other hand, men's brains have evolved with about half as many connections between the two brains, and rarely use both halves at the same time when doing anything. Men's brains function quite separately from each other. Language, the rules of grammar, vocabulary, emotions, etc. are stored in one side of the brain or the other.
When you see a female bain when speaking, you will see it light up all over in many different areas in each brain. With men it is very localized in one side exclusively.
Cultural factors cannot explain away why women always score better doing certain tasks or activities, while men score better doing others.
There are always exceptions to the rule, where women outscore some men where men are suppsed to do better, but generally speaking, the studies speak for themselves.
I know from reading above that Webwench is against any sort of generalization, but that is how human beings function. Without taking lessons from life, and generalizing them into a set of rules, we would be left motionless, unable to make sense of the environment around us.