HPS 0612 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Theodor Meynert, Gross Anatomy, Temporal Lobe
18 Dec 2018
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Week 12-fmri and neurosexism: gender and the brain. The idea that men and women differ in their neural architecture is far from new: dedicated anatomical studies go back well into the 19th century. Studies were conducted by meynert and broca, among others. In retrospect, many of the reports seem simply to confirm their authors" preconceptions. Many authors note that any size differences would be concordant with body size generally: hypothesized that differences reflected non-cognitive functions (e. g. motor control) Others noted that connections between intelligence and gross anatomy were tenuous at best. What are the problems: old fashioned prejudice (perhaps implicit, reverse inference- using brain inferences to explain psychological differences. One to many: essentialism, types of inference. Lateralization may look more significant than it is fmri usually employs cluster-based testing: rather than correcting for 50,000 voxel-voxel comparisons, researchers examine clusters of voxels. Clusters can often be strange, though (e. g. involving multiple fmri revolutionized both psychology and psychiatry functionally distinct regions)
