8/9 Practice Analysis

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Choose one example of how neuroscience research reinforces gender differences and explain how it appears in this article.

• Starting from comparing across sex/gender (rather than any other comparison) enables sex/gender findings 
• Focusing on group differences obscures in-group variation and magnifies inter-group differences 
• Binary findings homogenize each group and essentializes claims (overstates shared-ness of thing)
• Essentialized claims applied to individuals
• Using brain imaging to measure sex/gender differences suggests that sex/gender differences are purely biological or found in nature (ignore’s society’s influence)
• Data is made meaningful through gender stereotypes

Choose one visual concept and explain how it works in this article to support the gender difference you identified.

• Mediation: what’s shaping how the information gets to us? (Scientific images appear “unmediated”)
• Transparency: how close does the image seem to “real life”? (Scientific images seem transparent (compared to a painting or cartoon, etc.))
• Mechanical Objectivity: the belief that machines are objective (unlike subjective people) and thus that machine-made images are more transparent than images produced by a person 
• Aesthetic Realism: artistic/visual choices that mask the process involved in producing texts to make them seem real (We learn to recognize visual signals that tell us something is “real”)

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/he-thinks-she-thinks

When Larry Cahill and his colleagues at UC Irvine conducted a series of experiments to track sex differences in the brain’s ability to store memories, they came to similar conclusions. Researchers found that the amygdala, which also processes emotional memories, acts differently in men and women. In one study, volunteers were shown a series of graphically violent films while their brain activity was measured using a PET scan.

To process the most disturbing material, men fired up the amygdala’s right hemisphere, which is more in tune with the outside world and communicates with regions that control sight, such as the visual cortex, and motor coordination, like the striatum. Women, on the other hand, activated the left hemisphere, which concentrates more on the body’s inner environment and is connected to the insular cortex, where sensory information is translated into emotional experiences, and to the hypothalamus, the master regulator of such basic functions as metabolism.

“When men are presented with an emotionally provocative stimulus, part of the motor system is activated, which may be why men try to resolve the situation by acting on the environment,” says Witelson. “But in women, the hypothalamus is activated, which controls digestion, so it may not be surprising that when a woman is really upset, she feels weak and nauseated and can’t sleep.”