Study: male/female brain differences

[Laforge]

Short article, maybe an interesting study:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/rfuo-mbd102915.php

 

+1 for gender egalitarianism?

 

[Kevin Beal]

Here's the actual abstract (4418 participants): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811915007697

(You have to pay $35 for the actual paper, and I didn't feel like it)

 

The article falsely claims that no studies showing a difference account for age that show a difference in percentage of white matter. I found one here within seconds (80 participants). There may be more that do, but I'm feeling lazy.

 

Basically, the argument is that the male hippocampus is larger, but it's proportional to the size of the brain overall. The author, however, is being misleading by framing the debate as being about hippocampus size, which it's not. That's just one claim among many about brain differences. For instance, male brains are larger, even after accounting for relative body size, which the study even supports.

 

I don't know very much about neuroscience, but the headlines on wired and everywhere pushing this meta-analysis all seem to make the same claim: that differences don't really exist between male and female brains, and unless the full study addresses the other claimed differences, it seems premature at the very least.