Boy brain, girl brain: How the sexes act differently
We’ve found real differences in the ways men and women think and behave – but which ones matter? New Scientist puts things in perspective
AS IF bookstore shelves weren’t groaning enough under the weight of books revealing the differences between men and women, Donald Pfaff has recently added another to the pile. Ask why he felt compelled to throw yet another volume into this vast library and he will tell you that he was fed up with reading popular but “science-lite” accounts. Authors who pretend that we are all alike annoy him as much as those who claim that men and women inhabit separate planets. Both are guilty of over-simplification, he fumes, and of treating the brain “like a lump of jello” lacking the diversity we need to run modern societies.
In November last year, Pfaff, a professor of neurobiology from Rockefeller University in New York, was a keynote speaker …
