Ruth Wilson:

Hi Gina,

This is fascinating. In a recent column in the Guardian, Ben Goldacre wrote about the fact that the more a behaviour is ascribed to the biology, the more possible it is that people with that behaviour are shunned (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/09/ben-goldacre-bad-science-adhd-stigma )

In that case, it was to do with research linking attention deficit disorder to genes. Do you think the same thing happens when particular behaviours are linked to male or female biology?

Gina:

Hi Ruth
The ‘biology is destiny’ argument is a double edged sword. Early attempts to ‘destigmatise’ mental health problems such as schizophrenia were based on the premise that an ‘illness’ model might produce a more sympathetic response than the ‘possession’ model or even the ‘pull yourself together’ approach. The rise of this medical model also held out the hope that such problems could be cured, in just the same way as physical illnesses.

The other side of the coin, though, is the ‘destiny’ half of the argument, that your fundamental physical characteristics, including how your brain works, are determined by your genetic make up and are immutably fixed, cannot be changed, something over which we have no control, and over which external inputs such as training or socialisation can exert no effect. It is this aspect which contributes to the ongoing stigmatising of mental health problems, with the impression that if your problem is brain-based, then the associated behaviour problems are more likely to be uncontrollable and unpredictable, as well as unchangeable.

With respect to male-female differences in behaviour, it is this immutability aspect which is frequently used to reinforce prejudices and stereotypes; i.e. women can’t read maps because their brains aren’t wired up in the ‘right’ way (with a sub-text that no matter how many map-reading classes you send us to we’ll never get any better!). Early exponents of the ‘biology is destiny’ approach went further and said that women not only could not ‘overcome’ their biology but should not, as this would interfere with their basic role in life i.e. childbearing and housekeeping. There is an hilarious spoof on this approach on YouTube (but you may find yourself nodding your head as well as laughing!):

Ruth Brooks:

Hi Gina,
I don't think I would have had the courage to reply so publicly to your fascinating blog, had not Ruth Wilson suggest I do so.

I too, was at the Aston Science Festival - not there long enough to hear your talk, though I would have loved to. I've had the amazing honour of winning the Material World 'So You Want To Be A Scientist' Competition for my project on the homing distance of Snails. I had a fantastic summer, with loads of support from a mentor and the MW team. I love Science, can understand concepts, make connections between different areas of information, see 'patterns' in phenomena.I think laterally and am always bursting with ideas and curiosity. So far so good.
BUT my achilles heel is that it is incredibly difficult for me to do the simplest thing on the computer, as well as use other technical gismos. Jokingly, at the Festival, I told my audience that I suffer from Neuro-technico-sequential function disorder (NTSFD). But actually, that's
a really good way of describing how my brain seems to (not) function.

I would love to know why my brain is the way it is, And also - a possible subject for your research - to know a) how often you have come across a similar problem b)if more women than men 'suffer' from it, c) what can be done to 'cure' it. I gladly offer myself as a 'guinea pig.'
And now - help! - I have to 'type the two words' and I can't make out the second letter!
Ruth.

Ruth Wilson:

Thanks Ruth - you are our next blogger after Gina, so people will have a chance to learn more about your wonderful study of snails. I am fascinated to read Gina's response to your question, as I seem to get melt downs from time to time, even though I am the new media lead here at the UKRC!

gina:

Hi Ruth,

Nice to hear from you. I had been following your snail story on the radio all summer so was really pleased when you won!

With respect to your NTSFD (!) your description of your 'pattern finding' skills as compared to your sequential 'phobia' may well underpin your problem.

There ia a very interesting difference between verbal and visuo-spatial processors with the former working better with information presented in a linear fashion, usually written or spoken, and the latter working better from diagrams and pictorial representations. (This used to be thought of as 'left-brainedness' vs. 'right-brainedness' but we have moved on from that rather simplistic dichotomy). Almost everyone has a preferred mode of processing although most can cope with both if there is no choice. And this is underpinned by different patterns of brain activation. But sometimes, visual processors find it very difficult to make sense of the verbal approach ( and vice versa).

Some of my brain imaging work involves children with developmental dyslexia and I am often struck by children who may struggle to read a simple word or phrase being able to race through really complicated pattern construction problems and who love things like Meccano.(I'm not suggesting you are dyslexic, by the way!) On a personal note, I ride in dressage competitions and find it impossible to learn the test unless I can see a diagram of it. The written list makes no sense to me!! So perhaps your computer/technical problems might be helped by finding manuals that use pictorial guides rather than long lists of written instructions.

One of the things that concerns me about the use of neuroscience to inform education is that by just 'pigeonholing' children into boys vs girls, we are very likely to be missing much more important groupings like the verbal vs. visuospatial processors.

If you want to volunteer for any brain imaging studies, then send me an email, ( g dot rippon@aston.ac.uk) and I'll let you know how to sign up.

gina:

P.S. Ruth
I realise I didn't answer your 'more men than women' question.

There is some evidence that women are more likely to do better on some verbal tasks than men. We are not talking absolute differences here, just that if you took a large sample of women and men and gave them a verbal task, it would be more likely that there would be more women among the top scorers and more men among the lower scorers.

So if the 'problem' is a verbaliser not being able to process visuospatial information, then it might be more common in women (with a higher proportion of men found in a population of verbal 'strugglers'). But, as above, the interesting difference is in how the brain processes information, not the gender of its owner!

Tracey Carr:

Gina Hi

I have been working with Blue Chip organisations who wish to increase senior female representation for 10 years. In that time there has been little or no progress in the numbers of women in power despite all the good policies and research.

In 2003 I began talking about the fact that men and women might be different and approach leadership differently. Not wrong, not right ...just different. If they (the City) had had eggs they would have thrown them.

Since that time I have been on a mission to have my message heard. Why? Becasue I have had 10,000 women go through my programmes and they all tell me the same story - they are different and feel misunderstood.

I have no interest in the nature-nurture debate. Cleary it is both.

What worries me about your recent approach is that we are heading back to the good old days of 'shhh...dont talk about it because it causes stereotyping' and my belief is that unless we accept where we are we cant move forward.

I have just launched this www.genderiq.tv to help organisations to move forward on this political subject and I encourage debate. I also talk about gender being on a scale of masculine/feminine leadership traits. There is no more need for the Thatcher sterotype of 'bloke in a skirt' and to avoid women having to go down this road we need to talk about differences and encourage a wider range of acceptable leadership styles.

I hope that we can speak and get on the same page. At the very least we must agree that tesotosterone causes different behaviour in men and women?

Gina:

Hi Tracey,
Thank you for the message. Lots to think about and try to answer!!

There are various aspects of the talk I gave at the British Science festival which haven’t got fully communicated ( I have asked our web people to post a pdf of the associated press release onto my web page to give a fuller version than that which has come via the Telegraph and the Mail. Watch this space!).

It is worth noting that I am generally reported as saying that there are no differences between men and women’s brains. Not so! Both structurally and functionally, differences have been found (but for what I mean by ‘different’ see below) and I have carried out this kind of research myself. Part of my message was that we should be careful a) not to think of such differences in terms of ‘hard-wiring’ (the ‘Biology is destiny’ type approach I outlined in my reply to Ruth 1 above), and b) not to lose sight of what is really meant by different.

The impression given when we talk about (say) gender differences in a particular skill or characteristic, is that all men are different from all women and that in order to predict how someone might perform on a relevant task or respond to a particular situation, all we need to know about them is that they are male or female. This is, of course, the basis of stereotyping – in some cases it may just be a useful form of shorthand but in other cases it may actually be harmful- by pigeonholing your expectations of or attitudes towards someone solely on the basis of their gender may lead you to ignore their true skills or potential.

Stereotyping of any kind can be VERY misleading and ignores much more interesting individual variations. I think the differences within groups such as gender groups are much more interesting than the differences between them. I am very concerned about statements that, for example, girls are hard-wired for verbalising and boys for visualising, because it will ignore those girls who are better visualisers than other girls (and some boys) or boys who are better verbalisers than other boys ( and some girls). And this is not just an academic concern – misinterpretation of what is really been shown can, for example, inform educational policy and training and suggest that teachers teach boys differently to girls.

Another aspect of my talk was my current concern about what has been termed the “Seductive allure of neuroscience” – or the power the prefix neuro- has in making explanations much more powerful and plausible (or, basically, accepted as “fact”). Because the wonderful brain images we can now produce look so easy to interpret, and because they can convey the impression that brain imagers are actually ‘mind readers’, there are quite a lot of old arguments being ‘refreshed’ by reference to such work. But in many cases the findings have been misunderstood or misinterpreted, producing the kind of populist books I have termed ‘neurotrash’. Gender differences is one of these areas; lie detection is another (and with another hat on I’m fighting that battle too!).

With respect to the ‘shh…. don’t talk about it because it causes stereotyping’ I think my message is really that much neurotrash sustains such stereotyping rather than causing it. One of my complaints re tests that prove whether or not you have a male or a female brain is that the exponents cheerfully acknowledge that not all men have a male brain or not all women have a female brain. To which my question is: so why call it a male brain? Or a female brain? I do think we should look very carefully at the pigeon-holes into which we put people in case we are missing much more interesting differences.
I notice from your ‘eve-olution’ website that you are concerned that my ‘neurononsense message is hindering progress’, which was certainly not my intention. I agree that it is really important that we acknowledge that different people have different ways of solving problems, different learning styles, different leadership styles and that ignoring such differences will lead to failure, lack of realising potential, discomfort/ incomprehension in the workplace/training arena or whatever. It is great that you are pushing organisations to acknowledge this!

(Incidentally, your website attributes the ‘neurononsense message’ to Angela Rippon which might startle her somewhat! Not to worry, I’m often asked if I’m Angela Rippon. Bet she doesn’t have the reverse problem!!)

Ruth Brooks:

Hi Gina,

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I shall chew it over in the next few days - there's a lot of information there, and I'd really like to think about how it relates to me.

I'll also email you about volunteering for brain imaging.

Best wishes,

Ruth.

E. Felgate:

Hi Gina,
Could you please explain more about Neuroimaging? Is a background in physics/engineering necessary?
Thank you very much

Gina:

Dear E.,

Thank you for your question. Neuroimaging is a 'catch-all' title for the techniques used for visualising activity in nerve cells. This can involve single cells right up to the whole brain, which is what I do. Brain imaging is really a better name for this – effectively we are measuring ‘brain waves’ and trying to understand the link between these and all types of behaviour (normal or abnormal). I am interested in the changes that occur in the brain when it is processing information. This can be simple information such as different sounds or much more complex situations such as looking at different emotional expressions or reading different kinds of text.

There have been amazing advances in brain imaging over the last 10 years or so, and we are very lucky at Aston to have the full range of state-of-the art imaging equipment, including a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner (which enables us to pinpoint the location of changes in brain activity) as well as electroencephalograph (EEG) and Magnetoencephalograph (MEG) scanners which allow us to look at the timing of the changes.

Working the scanners does not entail any high level science training, although some basic physics and biology will help understand how they work and what it is in the brain they enable us to measure. Physicists and engineers have developed the systems and, together with mathematicians, help develop ways of processing the signals we measure and ways of displaying the images so that we can visualise the changes we are interested in. Biologists will help understand the normal or abnormal activity that underpins the signals we are measuring. Psychologists help map out different aspects of behaviour in a way that can be used in scanning studies, as well, perhaps, as assessing different characteristics of the people we are scanning. So working in brain imaging involves a full range of scientists, all working together to try and understand how the brain works and, in some cases, what has gone wrong and how it might be put right. I find it continuously fascinating and feel really privileged to be involved!

Jan Peters:

Hi Gina

Really interested to read about your work and lucid responses. I have just returned from an EU conference where the Gender and Science Database was launched. This is a fantastic resource of over 4,500 research papers from across Europe on gender and science - all are peer reviewed papers. http://www.genderandscience.org/web/gsd_present.php

Having been involved in this arena at an EU level for 11 plus years and being the first UK expert to the EU on this it was interesting to see the debate move on. The Conference papers will be on the website soon and the outputs from the final roudtable sessions too. The arguments and evidence are much better structured and now they are all together effective polices can now be delivered. So at last we can move beyond the studies of 19 men and 19 women and get a clearer picture that won't limit women's choices because of what people think they can and cannot do. Thanks for extending the debate!

Gina:

Thank you for the link re the Gender and Science database. A great resource!! Tell me how to push up the neuroscience content!

Gina:

I have managed to get the press paper/summary associated with my "Sexing the Brain" uploaded on to my website. The pdf version of the paper can be found under 'Additional Activities' and downloaded.

I've had a couple of emails re readings associated with this debate. "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine and "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" by Lise Eliot are two recent additions, both excellent (and very accessible) resources.

Ruth Wilson:

Hi Gina,

I am really enjoying the questions and your responses.

Can I change my brain?

I know I can change my mind through being open, questioning, seeking and re-assessing evidence, using imagination and empathy.

You suggest that our brains are not just predetermined, but are shaped by external forces such as stereotypes. Is there something therefore that I can do to change my brain, to free it from shackles and make it more effective?

(By the way, we have a discussion going at the Nature Network Women in Science Forum on 'stereotype threat' which you and all readers are welcome to join in.)

Helen:

Hi Gina

The "nature vs. nurture" debate is something I've run into more times than I can remember in the past few years. My feeling is that it's probably a bit of both (and maybe other things of which we're currently not aware).

I guess I'm just wondering where transsexual women and men fit into your theory - Zoe Brain wrote quite a lengthy blog post (BiGender and the Brain - http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/06/bigender-and-brain.html ) - which has some interesting ideas and links to other articles. I'm curious to know what you think about the subject.

Regards
Helen

Sam Johnson:

Hi There,
Something that puzzles me is the idea that Psychology is a science (i.e. uses the scientific method). I've read some qualitative psychology where folk seem to make it up as they go along, its very subjective. Obviously this goes to the heart of how believable your message is.
Oh, and by the way, do you know why many more women than men study psychology at university? I recall that there was an undergrad intake at Nottingham some time ago in which all the undergrads were female!

gina:

Hi Ruth,

Can you change your brain? Yes you can! (to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama!).
To some extent we are changing our brains all the time, by exposing them to different environments, different experiences, different challenges. We can be ‘Open Brained’ as well as ‘Open Minded’.

Of course, discussing whether or not changing the neural underpinnings of our thought processes is the same as ‘changing our minds’ is something that has exercised thinkers for a very long time!! Crucially, our brains are much more plastic than early neuroscientists thought and continue to be ‘reorganised’ throughout our lives. The connections in our brain are much more continuously dynamic than we thought, although there are critical periods, especially in infancy and childhood, when these connections are being formed and ‘pruned’ at a much more dramatic rate.

But it is not necessarily a passive process and, particularly as we get older, may need much more focused and active engagement. This is the basis of some of the interventions to overcome the consequences of brain ageing. I was also involved in the launch of a book called “The New Optimists” at the British Science Festival (I didn’t talk about sex ALL the time!!) to which I contributed an essay about a much brighter future for our brains.

Thank you for the link to the Nature Network – really interesting discussions. I’ll certainly join in as soon as I can!!

Gina:

Hi Helen,
I think underpinning all I have been saying is the premise that our brains undergo physical changes as the result of the contents of the environment (a given), but not just very specific sensory or educational inputs, but possibly much more tenuous ‘events’ such as attitudes and expectations. It has been shown that just asking students to tick a box indicating whether they are male or female can alter the responses they give to a questionnaire.
There is a current (and still unresolved) debate in neuroscience about the existence of a ‘mirror neuron’ system in the human brain. The early work was done with animals but has now been extended to humans. If someone is watching someone else performing an action, their brain will show the same pattern of activation as it they were performing the action themselves. This has been extended to different responses occurring if you are looking at a happy face or a sad face. Also 'empathy scenarios'. Very speculative, I know, but it might suggest an interesting substrate for the effect of negative or positive attitudes?

The issue of transsexual (or homosexual) individuals as providing some kind of insight into the effect of hormones on the brain’s hardwiring and its impermeability to upbringing etc. has understandably informed a lot of the ‘biology is destiny’ debate. It is hard to draw very fixed conclusions from the research that has been done. By its very nature, it involves very small numbers of individuals who have had very different life experiences, both physical and psychological (as evidenced by Zoe Brain’s own blog). I do believe that our genetic makeup determines the substrate with which life experiences interact; when this genetic make-up is very different it could provide clues as to the contribution of our genotypes to our phenotypes but we have to be cautious about the conclusions we draw.

gina:

Dear Sam,
I think there are 3 issues/questions you’ve raised here, so I’ll go through them in turn.
a) Psychology as a science? I’m absolutely adamant that Psychology is a science!! And I hope that is at least partly why I was invited to be one of UKRC’s bloggers. I know that ‘Psychology’ doesn’t always spring to mind when people talk about the STEM subjects, which I find not only disappointing but also rather short-sighted. The nature of psychology as an academic subject is still misunderstood, by the wider public but also, it has to be said, by the students applying to study psychology at university and, sometimes, by other academic disciplines within the universities themselves. “Why do psychologists need laboratories?” “What do psychologists know about brain imaging?” “ Why are psychologists interested in the brain” ( no, really) are questions that I personally have been asked and my colleagues could supply many such examples.

At the heart of any good Psychology degree is a training in the scientific method; the need for proper collection of evidence and analysis of results,taking account of variables other than the one you are interested in etc. All methods found in physics, chemistry engineering, just focusing on solving different kinds of problems – behaviour rather than bridges or roads. Psychology students will come across biochemistry and pharmacology in order to understand (say) how drugs work, genetics in order to understand conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, neurophysiology in order to understand brains and brain imaging, as well as being exposed to different kinds of statistics and research designs. Psychology degrees can and do produce good scientists who go on to address really key issues such as the ageing brain, recovery from brain injury, treatment of mental health problems.

Psychology has a very wide knowledge base and can be attractive to students who have found the more traditional science subjects too narrow or addressed to problems they find too abstract. Quite a few of our undergraduates come to us through a ‘pure’ arts stream, often having been told either that they are ‘no good’ at science or who have been put off it pre-A-level. It is refreshing to see how well many of them respond to the challenges of biology and statistics and learn to design intriguing research projects of their own. Perhaps STEM ambassadors or those struggling to re-engage school children with science might take a leaf or two from Psychology’s book?

b) Your comment about qualitative psychology is rather misrepresentative of what they do!! I’m not trained in qualitative techniques myself so I apologise in advance if my defence of them is not well-informed! Their focus is much more on the individual and how each person responds to a situation; interpretation can well be described as subjective but I believe they would claim this as a key aspect of what they do. They use techniques such as ‘discourse analysis’ to identify underlying themes in semi-structured interviews. Interestingly, in some cases they still refer to such findings as ‘data’ and may use these to (say) devise questionnaires which they then use to generate findings suitable for more quantitative analysis.

c) Why are there more women than men do Psychology? That’s certainly true at the undergraduate level and part of that may have to do with what I mentioned about the differences between psychology and the more traditional sciences. I have to be careful about saying that perhaps this approach is more attractive to girls than boys having laid out my ‘anti-stereotyping stall’ early on, but I am sure it is a contributing factor. It could be that the promise that psychology offers of addressing ‘real world’ (people?) issues and of using a wide range of different approaches to address those issues is more attractive to girls than boys (for whatever reason!!. Again, as above, this might be something that STEM ambassadors etc. might like to harness?

gina:

By the way, Ruth (and everyone!), with respect to the Nature Network forum ongoing discussion, have you come across:

http://reducingstereotypethreat.org/? I'll post this link there as well.

Ruth Wilson:

The Reducing Stereotype Threat you mention is brilliant, Gina. Thank you. I have written a short summary of it over at the Nature Network discussion.

The site has many useful references, including one to an amazing experiment around, women, maths and the value of 'subliminal sound'. I've included this in my summary.

Kate Cooper:

Fascinating debate - sorry I'm so late in joining it!

A while ago, there was some fascinating work done in France which investigated why so few women get to the top of organisations. (And, dammit! I can't find it!) Along with all the usual stuff about career breaks etc, they put forward the hypothesis that men traditionally catch the coat tails of a rising star – and switch allegiance if said rising star stops rising! (Intriguingly, this appears to be what chimpanzee males.) And for women, such behaviour is sexually ambigious to both parties, and can be socially difficult.

Gina:

Hi Kate, Not quite sure what the question is? If you could find the research reference ( Google Scholar might help?) I could have a look.
Regards

Ruth Brooks:

Hi Gina -

Still trying to contact you regarding volunteering for brain imaging. Unable to access your email through the site and also through normal email channels. Postmaster just returns my email, though I've checked it several times. I've also rung your department and left my phone number and email, so would be glad to hear from you.

Thanks for an interesting discussion,

Ruth Brooks.

Gina:

Sorry about the email problem, Ruth. The address is g. rippon @aston.ac.uk. You should certainly have been able to access it via the website. I'll get it checked. I'll pick up your phone message as soon as I'm in the office. Will catch up with you somehow! Gina

Alexandra Jellicoe:

Hi Gina

Your views regarding the differences between men and womens brains are very interesting. But regardless of nature or nuture, I can't help thinking that the reason women are still not well represented in fields such as science is that we are not admitting and accepting our differences and building a system that accomodates those differences.

You mention in your artice that there is no reason women can't change in order to be successful in such careers. I argue that actually, the system needs changing - not me.

http://alexandrajellicoe.com/2010/11/04/women-cant-do-science-nature-or-nuture/

Best
Alex