March 12, 2005
Mind Your Conclusions About The Brain
I think people take a far too deterministic view of genetics and neuroscience. If the question is, do women and men learn differently, think differently, then I’d say science would support you. If, however, you’re saying that there is an innate disability on certain subjects for women, that is not scientifically supportable as far as I can see.
It's easy for conservatives to put forward such notions because it confirms what has been traditionally believed in times past. I recognize that all conservatives are not necessarily subscribers to this belief, but I don't think I would be off if I said that the leadership is more invested in ideas of traditional women's roles than the Democrats are.
All that considered, though, the notion is based on preconceived notions conflated with evidence that satisfies holders of that view.
Let's take the case of the "God Spot".
The story of this starts with Neuroscientist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, and a young man with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. In looking at the boxing glove shape of the brain, The Temporal lobe is the thumb, located below the Temporal bone of the skull (cerebral lobes are named for the pieces of the skull above them.) Like many parts of the brain, it's multipurposed. Many of the tasks it takes care of are related to memory.
The brain, it seems, does not have a hard drive. There is no one location where memories are stored. The changes seem to be in the connections between different parts of the brain. Memory is not simply the recovery of data, scientists like Ramachandran have discovered, it's the recovery of states of mind, feelings even.
How powerful can it be? It can affect a person physiologically. With drug addicts, the place or places where they normally get high can have such an effect on how the brain anticipates the hit, that it can mean the difference between a tolerated dose and an overdose. What we feel from our experiences and what we feel about what we sense int he world around us are integral parts of our memory. Our emotions and feelings can act in turn as gateways to certain sets of memories. Even the substances we take in can have an effect. Take in a lot of caffeine studying for the test, and you may end up needing to drink a few cups of coffee before the test to recall things in the best detail.
Emotional and visceral states of mind are part of the structure of memory. The structures concerning memory have a hardwired connection to our limbic system, a set of midbrain neural nuclei in the brain that regulate our emotional responses.
As we travel through the territory of our daily lives, there is no neutral ground. We feel something about everything we see around us. Looking at Temporal Lobe Epileptics, Ramachandran proposed that the extraordinary mystical experiences that follow their seizures maybe the result of the scrambling of a certain part of the temporal lobe that helps us to make emotional readings of what we feel in the world around us. Like defibrillators stimulate the heart, the Temporal Lobe Seizure redlines the parts of the brain that give us that emotional reading of the world. In the aftermath, Ramachandran theorizes, everything takes on heightened significance. Everything is one. Everything is meaningful.
Needless to say, there are profound implications to that, and people ran with it. For those who believe religion to be merely superstition, it was evidence that God was merely a product of a neurological quirk. For those who believed it to be a product of evolution, it was evidence that nature selected for religious experience in human beings. For those who believe in God in whatever form, it was one more piece of evidence to trumpet: we are hardwired to worship God!
In short, people saw what they wanted to see in a quirk in the brain that explained nothing except a mechanism by which such experiences may happen in normal people and epileptics alike. It doesn't prove or disprove the presence of a supernatural creator. It's functional enough to where we can't assume it was put there just for mystical experience. It is a profound philosophical question, but I think it's honestly more intriguing in that its sheds light on the complex nature of how the brain works.
The Microprocessor paradigm of understanding the brain is misleading. We do have parts of the brain that serve certain functions, but the waves of impulses that pulse through the brain aren't signals being sent back and forth between fixed processors. Instead, the wiring carrying the signals does the processing, the impulse in perpetual motion.
In dealing with gender and orientation issues, we must take that and other things into account. I doubt there is a specific switch in the brain on orientation. Like most functions, sexual attraction and arousal are products of many different parts of the brain. Isolating a gay gene in our genetic code or a gay spot in the brain could be no less futile than trying to find the seat of the soul or the place where all the memories are stored. The function may not be that simple, and "correcting" it may have a price we would balk at paying.
Gender issues are complex in this way, too. Math and Science are not taken care of by some discreet processors in the brain, but a variety of different parts working in concert. Granted, the parts in the brain that men have and women are likely a bit dissimilar, but how much so, and to what end? As I suggested in a recent comment to another Watchblogger's entry, the difference may be more in the way women think about math, science, and business, not in the ultimate quality of the decisions. In fact, the differing approach may be exactly what math, science and business need.
The ghost of the old establishment still lingers, an establishment that believes that there is a standard way to think about the world and all other approaches degenerate from it. The truth is, the world doesn't work that way. Our brain is a complex thing, both biologically and in how it experiences the world.
Such differences have already had their effect on the world in which we live.
The words Asperger's Syndrome, for example, may not mean much to the average person, but those with this condition have changed the world. Not may have, have.
People joke about folks with abnormally high focus on esoteric things, about folks with lousy social skills and annoying habits, but at the same time we marvel at intuitive intelligence that certain individuals have in the arts and sciences, with the printed word and the moving image. Our society talks about the folks that are made fun of today being their tormentors bosses tomorrow. We know these people, and yet we don't. They are frustratingly opaque in their manner, but paradoxically straightforward about what they believe and feel.
From a certain perspective, this Autism-spectrum condition would be a disability to be selected against in looking for the ideal in human thought. It's true that Asperger's Syndrome has its pathological, dysfunctional side, and many find those who have it frustratingly out of sync with the ideals of our strongly social, fun-loving, life-in-the-moment obsessed society. But the life of the neurotypical and those who live with Asperger's are more entwined than one might expect, or perhaps care to admit, especially in a day and age with complex technology like ours.
Asperger's is an extreme example, but one that should be paid attention to when regarding the abilities of women in math and science. After all, A woman deserves much of the credit in discovering the structure of DNA, alongside Watson and Crick. A woman discovered the first radioactive element, Radium. Heck, a woman named Ada Lovelace is credited as the first computer programmer. She was a contemporary and associate of Charles Babbage, regarded now as the father of computing.
I guess my point is that we should take these differences in neurology and not use them as some justification to shut people out, but instead exploit the opportunities available in taking on problems and issues from a different point of view, and a different state of mind. America prides itself on using the talents and abilities of all, instead of wasting them over old prejudices and assumptions. It is only American not to underestimate women or unconventional thinkers in business, the arts or the sciences.
Posted by Stephen Daugherty at March 12, 2005 08:18 AMOTOH, some people get scared by any mind=brain theory, whether it is highly reductionistic or not.
Since it is quite reasonable that the mind does equal the brain, in working with reasonable a true progressivism asks: “OK, what do we do with this?”
On this particular issue, Ramachandran is not espousing an overly reductionistic view of the brain’s workings. And, the idea that TLE might be linked to religious visionary behavior is far from something brand-new, anyway.
My point is that when neuroscience or cognitive science is not being politicized by conservative points of view, it shouldn’t be politicized by liberal points of view either.
Posted by: Steve Snyder at March 12, 2005 12:32 PMSteve
Yes. This does not have to be political. I fear that my post on the other side provoked this post.
The point I was making on the other side was that if we recognize differences and predispositions, we can make better decisions. We can’t ignore them because they are unpleasant or politically incorrect.
I emphasize also that relationships are statistical. You can’t be certain about any individual base on group characteristic. It only gives a direction to look.
My other point is that we need to be consistent. We can’t both believe that people don’t choose sexual preference and that women might as a group learn differently than men and simultaneous believe that we should expect no difference in achievement when considering large groups – NOT individuals – groups. That fewer women are found among the highest ranks of math and science may not be the result of at least the exclusive result of discrimination.
By the way, if you believe that results should be exactly equal, you also have to ask yourself why so many more men are in prisons. You would have to conclude that is also because of discrimination.
Better knowledge of how the brain works does not determine what you have to do, but it does create some options and foreclose others.
No individual’s options should be limited by statistical analysis of gender differences (or racial or religious, etc.) The President of NOW applied for engineering school in college, and was told repeatedly that such a decision was a mistake. This is gender bias. She should have received the same encouragement and support as any male would have with the same qualifications of grades and aptitude scores.
That is what this issue is really about. Public policy should not be designed to template opportunities onto gender, race, religion etc.
Women earn less over their lifetimes than men in the same positions. There are multiple factors of causation for this. Some are factual based. Such as women take more time in their life away from career to redirect their energy toward offspring. Hence, they have actual less hours worked in the aggregate than men over the course of a lifetime. On the other hand, many companies and corporations anticipate an individual woman’s propensity toward time away from work and account for that as a negative in determining wages and promotions. That is a kind gender discrimination which should be avoided.
But, we are in an area here where fact and fiction are very difficult to evidence on an individual basis. We all know that subjectivity plays a large part in the wage increases and promotions and there always will be. With that as a given, it is difficult to imagine how public policy can be established to insure that such bias does not occur. It can be mitigated, but, not eliminated.
Posted by: David R. Remer at March 12, 2005 01:12 PMI keep on feeling that I am not making my position clear.
Public policy should not use the template of race or sex, but that is exactly what we are doing now and PC thought advocates doing more.
Our template – implicit and sometimes explicit – is that any differences among populations must be the result of discrimination and must be addressed by those tools. We seem unable or unwilling to embrace the simple truth that differences in individual choices, abilities, tastes and random chance – otherwise called diversity – will inevitably produce differences in outcome.
I seriously doubt if there is any NET discrimination against women in our society. Women suffer discrimination every day. So do men. I believe it nets out to zero or in these days of affirmative action, to the benefit of women. I can’t prove this. But neither can anyone else prove the contrary. We will trade anecdotes and statistical analysis. And finally, my opponents will pull out the trump card of differential outcomes. I don’t accept that as proof and neither should anyone else. There are only four million Norwegians, yet the often win a majority of the medals in cross-country skiing. Certainly this is evidence of bias, isn’t it?
Everyone has stories of when they were discouraged from a job or a promotion. I bet there are few women who can point to a concrete and explicit case where they were denied a job or promotion because of their gender. Most men can point to many such cases. I have been told several times. When I graduated with my MBA, many firms interviewed all my female classmates and made job offers before they interviewed any males. That was 20 year ago, you might say. Last year when I was asked to do some recruiting for my government agency, the person sending me specifically told me “we aren’t actively seeking people who look like you.” Discrimination, yes. Net discrimination, no.
Jack, it is more often NOT an either, or, situation. Real discrimination does exist and templates are needed to redress those Where such Templates CAN be effective. That said, templates should never exclude individual merit and capacity based on race, gender or religion.
In other words, if Blacks are discriminated against, where a Black and a White apply for a position and their capacities and merits are nearly the same, the Black should have preference. Where the White or Black has demonstrably better qualifications, that person should be preferred based on the qualifications.
This, in theory, is the optimal balance. However, prejudice and bias being what they are, and choices of candidates for whatever, being always at least a somewhat subjective evaluative process, it will always be less than a perfect implementation, and the imperfections will always be met with contention. It is the price America must pay for is racially contentious history.
Posted by: David R. Remer at March 12, 2005 02:31 PMDavid
The problem with any measurement is always interpretations and standards.
Qualifications can be set very high or very low. You and I are QUALIFIED to play major league baseball if they mean the ability to swing a bat and run around bases. So if we are in a job interview with Sammy Sousa and they set the qualification low, we might get in. What if the qualification is set at batting 1000? Nobody can reach that. We are AS QUALIFIED at Sammy Sousa.
So if we allow the race or sex based template, we are always in danger of qualification setting to fit the desired result.
Judge only by the content of character.
By the way, I have to travel for a couple days, so I won’t be able carry on this conversation until maybe Tuesday. I am not avoiding the debate. See you later.
Jack-
I guess this is a drink deeply or not at all sort of situation. We talk about the brain, talk about Women’s aptitudes as if the question is superiority or inferiority by gender, and not by talent. I think talent and the ability to get the job done should be a main determinant in hiring. That said, it doesn’t seem like discrimination to see a deficiency of minorities in one’s hiring, see a candidate who is well qualified in comparison to the rest of the field, and just say, “Why not?”
I do believe there is an indentification bias at work in hiring, and while we don’t always need the remedy of that hardwired into the law, we do need to chose a minority candidate to fill in the job on purpose, sometimes. I’m not talking about discrimination, but rather countering consciously a tendency we sometimes have unconsciously- the tendency to hire somebody who looks like us, behaves like us.
We should be able to look around our offices and tell whether the workplace is as diverse as it should be. If it doesn’t appear to be, we might want to be looking more for people to fill in those gaps, as well as meet the qualification. This should be done until hiring minorities comes naturally.
But the decision should be made on an individual basis. The brain is not some prototyped machine that is the same in nearly every one of us, but occasionally broken down or defective in some of us. It is a complex creation that has many inheritable qualities, from basic temperament to the ability to pay attention effectively. The example I gave, of Asperger’s Syndrome, is of a disorder that often appears in both more severe and lighter versions in other family members.
The thing to understand about these differences is that you can’t always reduce them to a one-dimensional better/worse measure. The brain is made with a non-linear recipe of attributes, and what gets cooked up in development can mean the difference between an autistic child that may never live on his or her own, and an eccentric, cerebral person who’s a bit disorganized but self-supporting.
Whoever said the association of TLE’s and mystical experience was well known was right. It’s the mechanism or quality of the brain that brought this on that was new.
Such mechanisms highlight the complexity of the brain and its responses, in that these neural bottlenecks play such a big role. With the complexity of the brain, and the simplicity and opacity of many tests, the difference between male and female test scores may indicate little more than a difference of thought-style, rather than a difference in capabilities. Trying to predict, broad brush, who will do the job best, is an exercise in willful blindness to the individual, despite the importance of that person’s individual character to the hiring process.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 12, 2005 02:48 PMAll of this brain talk has given me a headache. Can anyone tell me why?
Posted by: Blaine at March 12, 2005 02:54 PMWell, you asked for it:
Your meningeal tissue (that which lines the inside of your brain and protects your brain) is getting irritated. Your brain, having plenty of nerves but no sensory endings in it, cannot feel such pain.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 12, 2005 04:17 PMFinally!!! Some useful info.
This meningeal tissue, is it part of the Grey Matter?
I took a cut on the head and am wondering…
Posted by: Aldous at March 13, 2005 08:03 AMNo. The Meninges are a set of connective tissues that wrap the brain and spinal cord. First layer, the Dura Matter, provides a tough outside layer of protection. When a doctor talks about a subdural hematoma, he’s speaking of a leakage of blood below the firm outer layer of the meninges.
Beneath that is the arachnoid membrane and the subarachnoid space. The spidery name owes to its appearance. Within this layer is the Cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain, and nourishes parts that don’t have an immediate blood supply. excess pressure or bleeding into or above this part of the meninges can have harmful effects for the brain.
Finally, directly coating the brain, we have the Pia Mater. It is the Soft Mother to the Dura Mater’s Tough Mother. This layer coats the brain with a layer of blood vessels that give its nutrients.
It is the grey matter that this Pia Mater protects. Typical nerve cells, including many in the brain, are coated with white sheaths of a fatty substance known as myelin, which raises the efficience and speed of nerve transmission. Unmyelinated grey matter is much more interconnected, at the price of being very energy hungry. Grey matter is present in several parts of the brain, including the interior of the spinal cord and the exterior of the Cerebrum and Cerebellum. This densely interconnected nerve tissue does the bulk of the processing work for the central nervous system. The white matter, on the other hand, serves an important but accessory role connecting the different parts of the brain and nervous system together.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at March 13, 2005 12:25 PMApparently facts and information of the reliable kind put a lot of folks on the right straight to sleep ! Explains a lot. :-)
Posted by: David R. Remer at March 13, 2005 04:54 PMAll of this joking around…
Does anyone have statistics on Russian women scientists? I know so many Russian women who are in engineering and physics, working out here in the U.S. I had an interesting talk with one woman and asked her if she ever felt discriminated against, she answered “because I’m Jewish?” And I said “Uh, because you’re a woman.” and she answered “A Jewish woman?”
She never really did understand what I was talking about.
Julia
Posted by: Julia at March 13, 2005 05:33 PMDiscrimination also depends on the culture and society. There are such things as stereotypes which perpetuates discrimination. There is no reason for women not to have equal representation in engineering, computers and science. Unfortunately, culture prevents them from going for it.
Posted by: Aldous at March 13, 2005 10:55 PMThe human brain is incredibly complex. Its a proven fact that female and male brains work differently on a chemical and electrical level. However this does not mean women and men cannot be worse at some things than others.
It depends on the individual. I happen to excell at creative activities such as painting, writing and jewerly making. When it come to quantitative skills I can barely do algerbra and I need Quicken to keep my checkbook balanced.
On the otherside of the coin I have a female friend who has just graduated from Berkely with a degree in Bio-Engineering. Just looking at her text book makes me blood from the ears.
If you have an interest in a field and proper education, you can succeed no matter how you carry your reproductive organs. To claim that women cannot do somethings just because they are different is ignorant in the extreme. Some portion of any population will not be good in a given field. But that does not mean you can proclaim that a certain group should not then participate in a field just because some of them their group does not preform well.
Posted by: William at March 16, 2005 02:58 PM
