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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (171836)10/3/2005 8:16:01 PM
From: geode00  Read Replies (3) of 281500
 
Well, this disagrees with you on maturity. What is your definition of maturity? How much of what happens in an individual's brain development is a result of environment: encouragement, discouragement, nutrition, exercise, education, etc. vs being a strict function of DNA?

As I said before, get the scientific evidence before turning an opinion into policy.

=="...Boys generally demonstrate superiority over female peers in areas of the brain involved in math and geometry. These areas of the brain mature about four years earlier in boys than in girls, according to a recent study that measured brain development in more than 500 children. Researchers concluded that when it comes to math, the brain of a 12-year-old girl resembles that of an 8-year-old boy. Conversely, the same researchers found that areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills (such as handwriting) mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys....

Recent studies that highlight sex-associated brain differences may lead us to believe that men and women have little in common upstairs. That's not the case. "Men and women do have lots of brain areas that are the same," Geary tells WebMD. Moreover, members of both sexes excel at skills that are commonly labeled gender specific. "All of these things have overlapping distributions. There are many women with better-than-average spatial skills, and men with good writing skills," Geary says.

Some researchers believe that nurturing one's brain can enhance what nature has provided. Consider, for instance, the general superiority of males' spatial abilities. "There's a lot of evidence that we build up our brain's representation of space by moving through it," Denckla tells WebMD. As anyone who spends a significant time around children knows, boys tend to get a lot more practice "moving through space" -- chasing a ball, for instance -- than girls do. "My hypothesis is that we could possibly erase this difference if we pushed girls out into the exploratory mode," Denckla says. She predicts that as more and more girls engage in sports traditionally reserved for boys, like soccer, the data on spatial ability will show fewer disparities between females and males.

Others believe brain variations between sexes are for the best. "Most of these differences are complementary. They increase the chances of males and females joining together. It helps the whole species," Gur says."
webcenter.health.webmd.netscape.com
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