Did you ever look at the behavior of someone of the opposite sex and think, “It’s like they have completely different brains?”
Well, it turns out they do.
For centuries, nobody knew this. The study of human anatomy was, logically, conducted on cadavers. Now, if you want to learn about healthy anatomy, it is best to study a healthy cadaver. But where does one find bodies that are healthy, but dead? Why, the battlefield, of course. There the scientists of old found a plentiful supply of healthy bodies in the prime of life, except of course for some large, randomly placed cannonball holes. Working around those, researchers gained a lot of insight into healthy biology.
Those dead soldiers were virtually all males.
And so, we learned about biology by studying male biology, and no one really thought to wonder if, beyond the obvious reproductive differences, women were perhaps put together differently from men.
Early clues came in studies done by psychologist Herbert Landsell of brain-damaged persons. Scientists already knew that the right side of the brain controls visual and spatial functions, “big picture,” emotional and abstract thinking, and recognition of shapes and patterns. Meanwhile, the left side controls verbal and linguistic functions, details, and practical and concrete thinking. What Landsell discovered was that men with right-sided brain damage did badly in tests related to spatial skills, abstract thinking and other functions related to the right brain. Likewise, men with left-sided brain damage struggled with language skills, concrete thinking, orderly sequencing, and other left-brain skills. But strangely, women with the same types of damage did not struggle in the same way. Numerous subsequent studies have confirmed Landsell’s findings.
Why would this be? Why would men and women respond differently to essentially identical brain damage?
This is why: in women, language and spatial skills are controlled by both sides of the brain, while in the male brain, each is limited to one hemisphere. So, when one side was damaged, the women could compensate, whereas the men could not.
This discovery was one of the first of many differences science has discovered between the male and female brain.
One of the primary differences lies in the corpus callosum, the connection between the two hemispheres. In women, that connector is thicker and bigger in relation to overall brain weight, with a larger number of connections. Which means that, in women, there tends to be far more communication between the two halves of the brains.
This explains so much. This is why women tend to have an easier time accessing, identifying and discussing their emotions — our emotions more easily connect with our verbal centers. It is why studies consistently show that women are better able to identify other people’s emotions by reading the expression on their faces. It goes a long way to explaining “women’s intuition.” Our ability to reach into the non-verbal side of our brains means we can extract information, but we can’t necessarily explain how we got it.
Meanwhile, men’s brains are more specialized. With skills housed exclusively on one side, and less interplay between the hemispheres, men’s brains are more compartmentalized. In the emotional sphere, this makes them less attuned to their feelings. It also makes it easier for them to focus and makes them less distracted by superfluous information.
We still have a lot more to learn. Once again, with only 1,000 words, I can’t give you a complete treatment of the state of the science. But there is far, far more information in the book “Brain Sex” by Anne Moir and David Jessel, which has been my primary resource for this series. And of course, it bears repeating again that these differences in brain structure lead to different tendencies, but that each individual’s mileage may vary.
But why did God make men and women so different? Well, on a basic level, I like the thought that we are “complementary” — that men’s strengths tend to be women’s weaknesses, and that women’s strengths tend to be men’s weaknesses. It reminds us that we are intended to go through life together, not alone.
Also, on a deeper level, think about this: these brains are housed in bodies — different bodies. Women’s bodies give birth. Men’s bodies do not. What do women need after having a baby? Well, the ability to read emotions without verbal cues would come in awfully handy when dealing with a child who can’t yet speak, wouldn’t it? Also, in the wild world that constitutes most of our history, when a woman is focused on recovering from labor while feeding and providing for her baby, she is less able to fend for herself. So, she needs protection and provision. And what does the father of her child need when he is out hunting game with a spear so his family can eat? For starters, he needs higher muscle mass, and more endurance and aggression. And he doesn’t need to be distracted by superfluous information or have his feelings poking through and upsetting him. “We had a fight and now I’m sad.”
Today, of course, we live in a world with grocery stores and alarm systems and baby monitors. Parents have a lot more flexibility in how they structure the day-to-day lives of their families. And different families work it out in different ways, based on their own individual strengths and what they judge to be best in their own situations.
And yet, despite how the world has changed, we still walk around with these very differently wired brains, which give us different strengths and different gifts.
This is a tremendous opportunity for all of society. St. John Paul II was clear that the family — above all — needs both men’s and women’s gifts. He was also clear that every area of society — business, politics, faith — needs both men’s and women’s gifts. Society is poorer when women’s gifts are absent, just as the family is poorer when men are not active participants in the lives of their children.
To go back to where we started three columns ago — male and female are equal in dignity, while constituting profoundly different ways of being human.
And those differences are very, very good.
Bonacci is a syndicated columnist based in Denver.
