Gender differences

[Hope]

There are other differences between us, other than the obvious, like for example, it's a fact the loss of speech happens far more often with men than it does with women simply because women's brains are wired in a differing way to a man's brain, the great majority of men have one speech area in their brains as compared to the average woman's brain has three areas in her brain that deal with language.

With the information above it becomes quite obvious why, post stroke, a loss of speech happens more frequently to men and there are several other, not so obvious, areas where we differ too.

ippy

Whilst I am not suggesting that your basic information is wrong, ippy, my experience seems to suggest the opposite.  I know more women who have lost speech following a stroke than men who have.  Whether this has anything to do with the type of stroke man and women suffer - ischaemic or haemorrhagic; or simply the relative number of strokes that the two genders suffer from, I don't know.

[Maeght]

I have just spent a few minutes trying to find out what I can about Allan Pease. There is a Wikipedia entry but it contains nothing other than a list of books he has apparently written.

There is an entry in www.goodreads.com which states the following:

There are certainly sex differences in the use of language and girls acquire language skills earlier than boys. The traditional view of this has been that testosterone slows down the development of particular areas in the brain, but I don't think that there is any suggestion that there are serious anatomical differences - to the extent that males brains lack structures that female brains possess. I suspect that Mr Pease may not be the most reliable of sources.

I think both genders have three speech related areas - not seen any info that they don't. There is an idea that women use both hemispheres when it comes to languages whereas men use mainly the left hemisphere - some studies support his, others don't. There certainly seem to be some differences between male and female brains but the idea that they are vastly different (Mars and Venus idea) seems way off to me, based on my experiences anyway.

[Harrowby Hall]

You may find the following interesting:

https://portal.uni-freiburg.de/cognition/lehre/archiv/ss12/mat-gender/matgend/6.%20Juni/6.6.a.pdf

It examines the validity of the long-held belief that the corpus callosum (the band of neural tissue that connects the hemispheres) is larger in women than men thus enabling women to have greater linguistic skills than men.

If I recall correctly, the split brain experiments of Sperry and Gazzaniga, half a century ago, established that language activity is present in both hemispheres but speech is restricted to the left hemisphere.

Mini-rant alert:

When will people stop using gender as a politically-correct alternative for sex?

Sex is the state of being male or female. I believe the word has the same root as secateur and implied being split into two distinct forms.

Gender is an assessment of masculinity or femininity and is a continuum.

Rant over.

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

Feminism has had two effects.

1. We are trying to eliminate all behavior patterns that we consider as exploitative and detrimental to women. Whether we are actually moving towards this objective is questionable....but it is a worthwhile objective no doubt.

2. Women and men are increasingly being treated as largely interchangeable  (except for obvious functions). I am not sure if this is a desirable trend. If this trend continues, it is possible that in the long term, evolutionary changes could take place (through epigenetic mechanisms) that could change the physiology and natural functions of women and men resulting in many undesirable consequences.

Just some thoughts.

[Maeght]

You may find the following interesting:

When will people stop using gender as a politically-correct alternative for sex?

Sex is the state of being male or female. I believe the word has the same root as secateur and implied being split into two distinct forms.

Gender is an assessment of masculinity or femininity and is a continuum.

Rant over.

Point taken.

[trippymonkey]

How do we look at gay people then?
Of course, not ALL physical males act like 'males' or women as 'soft & feminine'

A gay male primarily fancies another male so where does all this brain stuff apply?
There are males who are feminine but fancy women - same for some women ?

Nick

[ippy]

Where does it say that in post one?

Sorry but I thought you may have seen the reference to his jointly written book.

I have several close relatives in my family that, are also medical professionals, have read this book have enjoyed it as much as I did, none of them picked up on the speech centers part you refer to, and they wouldn't of held back from telling me about anything they thought wasn't kosher about any of the book's contents.

Like I said I will ask around and I'm asking around because I can't argue the case for a subject I only have a rudimentary knowledge about, but I can find out.

ippy

[ippy]

I think both genders have three speech related areas - not seen any info that they don't. There is an idea that women use both hemispheres when it comes to languages whereas men use mainly the left hemisphere - some studies support his, others don't. There certainly seem to be some differences between male and female brains but the idea that they are vastly different (Mars and Venus idea) seems way off to me, based on my experiences anyway.

As per my post 31 the information I have read about speech centers was referring to average figures; post 31 for the rest of my answer.

ippy

[Maeght]

Sorry but I thought you may have seen the reference to his jointly written book.

I followed the link and read the extract but couldn't see a reference to speech centres. I probably missed it hence my asking where it was.

I have several close relatives in my family that, are also medical professionals, have read this book have enjoyed it as much as I did, none of them picked up on the speech centers part you refer to, and they wouldn't of held back from telling me about anything they thought wasn't kosher about any of the book's contents.

Like I said I will ask around and I'm asking around because I can't argue the case for a subject I only have a rudimentary knowledge about, but I can find out.

ippy

That would be interesting. I've seen nothing to suggest a difference between the sexes so would be interesting to see what those 'in the know' say.

[ippy]

I followed the link and read the extract but couldn't see a reference to speech centres. I probably missed it hence my asking where it was.

That would be interesting. I've seen nothing to suggest a difference between the sexes so would be interesting to see what those 'in the know' say.

Thank you for your kind post Maeight, I like you would like to find out as well as you, I assumed the book I referred to in reply one has got it right.

You could try shooting the writers of the book, I've only passed on something I've read; like I've already indicated I didn't write the book.

ippy