Brain modules and sex
Well, sex differences, at least. News people never miss a chance to put sex in a headline. So I won’t miss the chance either.
New research from the University of Alberta shows that men and women utilize different parts of their brains while they perform the same tasks. The results of the research are reported this month in the journal NeuroImage.
The study involved volunteers who performed memory tasks, verbal tasks, visual spatial tasks and simple motor tasks while their brain activity was monitored with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) technology.
"It is widely recognized that there are differences between males and females, but finding that different regions of the brain are activated in men and women in response to the same task has large potential implications for a variety of different clinical situations," said Dr. Peter Silverstone, a psychiatrist at the U of A and an author of the study.
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=002000001PHC
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And not just for clinical situations. But the important point for more general purposes is that people can do “the same task” with different brain modules. There are other studies suggesting that differences in experience and practice also lead to such differences. Skilled musicians apparently handle music with brain structures not heavily used by amateurs.
In general, extended practice (psychologists call it “overlearning”) with a skill probably produces changes in the brain structures (modules) that manage the skill. Consider the statement “Beginners look down the rapids and see the rocks. Experts look down the rapids and see the flow around the rocks.” Connect this statement with my discussion last week about ignoring irrelevant information.
In this case, relevant information changes with experience. If I am a beginner, I see the rocks. They are scary. They tell me to stay out of these rapids. Sometimes you get better advice from rocks than from the people around you. As long as I am focusing on the rocks and threat they pose, I probably should run the rapids only with an expert in control of the canoe.
To the expert, the relevant information is the flow around the rocks. That is where the canoe is going. The expert looks at the rapids and calls up the Hunter. The Hunter is the part of the brain that focuses on the relevant information for reaching the target. And provides the short-term motivation to go for the goal.
We can’t expect fMRI studies on people running rapids. We can expect them on people running simulated rapids in computer games. I am confident that such studies would show big differences in the brain structures used by people with different levels of experience. It is possible that males typically have more experience than females with this kind of task. If so, we would also find sex differences in people who are apparently performing “the same” task.
In this case, we might find experience differences or sex differences, depending on what we looked for. Differences due to practice could be larger than differences due to sex. They might be of less interest in clinical contexts. They might be of much greater interest in learning contexts. Somebody will organize research on that in due time. It probably won’t get as much press. “Brain modules and learning” is not a catchy headline.
New research from the University of Alberta shows that men and women utilize different parts of their brains while they perform the same tasks. The results of the research are reported this month in the journal NeuroImage.
The study involved volunteers who performed memory tasks, verbal tasks, visual spatial tasks and simple motor tasks while their brain activity was monitored with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) technology.
"It is widely recognized that there are differences between males and females, but finding that different regions of the brain are activated in men and women in response to the same task has large potential implications for a variety of different clinical situations," said Dr. Peter Silverstone, a psychiatrist at the U of A and an author of the study.
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=002000001PHC
---------
And not just for clinical situations. But the important point for more general purposes is that people can do “the same task” with different brain modules. There are other studies suggesting that differences in experience and practice also lead to such differences. Skilled musicians apparently handle music with brain structures not heavily used by amateurs.
In general, extended practice (psychologists call it “overlearning”) with a skill probably produces changes in the brain structures (modules) that manage the skill. Consider the statement “Beginners look down the rapids and see the rocks. Experts look down the rapids and see the flow around the rocks.” Connect this statement with my discussion last week about ignoring irrelevant information.
In this case, relevant information changes with experience. If I am a beginner, I see the rocks. They are scary. They tell me to stay out of these rapids. Sometimes you get better advice from rocks than from the people around you. As long as I am focusing on the rocks and threat they pose, I probably should run the rapids only with an expert in control of the canoe.
To the expert, the relevant information is the flow around the rocks. That is where the canoe is going. The expert looks at the rapids and calls up the Hunter. The Hunter is the part of the brain that focuses on the relevant information for reaching the target. And provides the short-term motivation to go for the goal.
We can’t expect fMRI studies on people running rapids. We can expect them on people running simulated rapids in computer games. I am confident that such studies would show big differences in the brain structures used by people with different levels of experience. It is possible that males typically have more experience than females with this kind of task. If so, we would also find sex differences in people who are apparently performing “the same” task.
In this case, we might find experience differences or sex differences, depending on what we looked for. Differences due to practice could be larger than differences due to sex. They might be of less interest in clinical contexts. They might be of much greater interest in learning contexts. Somebody will organize research on that in due time. It probably won’t get as much press. “Brain modules and learning” is not a catchy headline.
posted by Selby Evans at 8:55 AM
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