{"id":1627,"date":"2017-01-18T14:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=1627"},"modified":"2017-12-30T16:51:27","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T16:51:27","slug":"1627-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/1627-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Size Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Is a man’s amygdala larger than a woman’s? And: why does it matter?<\/p>\n

The amygdala is central to neural networks that process strong negative emotions: especially fear and anger. Because psychological studies have shown gender differences in the expression<\/em> of these emotions, researchers have hypothesized that men might have a larger amygdala, on average, than women do.<\/p>\n

That is, gendered behavior<\/em> might have a biological<\/em> foundation in a gendered brain.<\/p>\n

According to a recent meta-analysis of 46 studies: not so much. Lise Eliot’s research team found<\/a> no statistically significant difference between male and female amydalae.<\/p>\n

(More precisely: men’s amygdalae are–on average–10% larger than women’s; but, men’s BRAINS are–on average–10% larger than women’s. So–relative to brain size–there is no meaningful difference.)<\/p>\n

Of course, male and female brains are not identical. And: behavioral differences between genders are important.<\/p>\n

However, if Eliot’s results hold up, we can no longer say that these behavioral differences result from meaningfully different amygdala sizes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is a man’s amygdala larger than a woman’s? And: why does it matter? The amygdala is central to neural networks that process strong negative emotions: especially fear and anger. Because psychological studies have shown gender differences in the expression of these emotions, researchers have hypothesized that men might have a larger amygdala, on average, than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21,17],"class_list":["post-1627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-gender","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1632,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1627\/revisions\/1632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}