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Books

Boy brain, meet girl brain

Understanding brain differences can help women to better plan their futures, an author argues.

By TOM VALEO
Published August 6, 2006

Feminists used to argue that differences between men and women were the result of upbringing. Little boys given trucks and guns as toys will become aggressive; little girls given dolls will become nurturing. Change the toys, according to this theory, and you will change the child.

One mother, embracing this notion, gave her daughter a bright red fire truck instead of a doll. A few days later she found the little girl in her room cuddling the truck in a baby blanket and cooing, "Don't worry little truckie, everything will be all right."

That mother was a patient of neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, who recounts this story in her book, The Female Brain, to illustrate her contention that many differences between males and females are inborn and highly resistant to change.

Admitting that, however, does not undermine the feminist belief in the inherent equality of the sexes, according to Brizendine. On the contrary, if we acknowledge these differences and recognize how they influence our thoughts, feelings and actions, we will gain self-knowledge and confidence.

"At each step of the way we can better understand our world if we can have a vision of what our brains are doing," Brizendine says.

Instead of trying to minimize the differences between men and women, Brizendine caricatures them. Yes, girls utter two to three times as many words per day as boys, and they speak about twice as fast. Yes, women recognize an array of emotions displayed by others while men recognize little more than anger.

And yes, men are obsessed with sex. According to Brizendine, sexual thoughts float through a man's brain every 52 seconds on average, while a woman may think about sex only once a day.

"Males have double the brain space and processing power devoted to sex as females," she writes. "Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes."

Brizendine is not merely laying out her own prejudices. Her bibliography runs to 58 pages, including more than 1,000 references, and almost every assertion she makes is backed up by a scientific study.

Not only that, as the founder of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic in San Francisco, Brizendine brings to her book firsthand experience gained from helping women cope with the hormones and other brain chemicals that shape their emotions and their behavior.

Mercifully, Brizendine translates her knowledge of brain research into conversational English, and generously illustrates her arguments with examples. For example, she recounts the story of a postmenopausal woman who decided to leave her husband after decades of marriage. While her husband considered this behavior irrational, Brizendine shows that it was the result, in part, of the sudden decline in estrogen that had driven this woman all of her life to nurture others and to avoid confrontation in order to maintain a peaceful household for the children. Brizendine also describes a little girl who adamantly preferred trucks to dolls, and insisted she was a boy. She turned out to have a rare enzyme deficiency called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which flooded her brain with testosterone.

Understanding the influence of hormones and other brain chemicals on female behavior can empower women, Brizendine argues. The woman who left her husband, for example, was able, after counseling, to reconcile with him by using her newfound boldness to extract concessions. And the parents of the girl with CAH were better able to accept her tomboy behavior.

Brizendine brazenly promotes politically incorrect concepts. Depression, for example, may be far more common among females because of the action of estrogen, not oppressive males.

But admitting such things does not diminish women, she says. On the contrary, it provides a fuller picture of who they are.

"If I had to impart one lesson to women that I learned through writing this book, it would be that understanding our innate biology empowers us to better plan our future," Brizendine writes in the epilogue. "If we can understand how our lives are shaped by our brain chemistry, then maybe we can better see the road ahead."

Tom Valeo writes the Body of Information column for the Times' Pulse page.

*   *   *

THE FEMALE BRAIN

By Louann Brizendine

Morgan Road/Random House, $24.95, 279 pp

Reviewed by TOM VALEO

[Last modified August 4, 2006, 08:52:29]