His Brain, Her Brain
Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Scientific American Magazine
Publisher
Scientific American
Publication Date
1-1-2005
Abstract
On a gray day in mid-January, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggested that innate differences in the build of the male and female brain might be one factor underlying the relative scarcity of women in science. His remarks reignited a debate that has been smoldering for a century, ever since some scientists sizing up the brains of both sexes began using their main finding--that female brains tend to be smaller--to bolster the view that women are intellectually inferior to men. To date, no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic distinction in math, physics or engineering. And the brains of men and women have been shown to be quite clearly similar in many ways. Nevertheless, over the past decade investigators have documented an astonishing array of structural, chemical and functional variations in the brains of males and females.
Recommended Citation
Cahill, Larry, "His Brain, Her Brain" (2005). ADVANCE Library Collection. Paper 80.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/advance/80
Comments
Originally published by Scientific American. Limited preview available through remote link. Subscription required to access article fulltext.