Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds

ISBN: 0525435379

Condition: New

Product DescriptionA breakthrough work in neuroscience-and an incisive corrective to a long history of damaging pseudoscience-that finally debunks the myth that there is a hardwired distinction between male and female brainsWe live in a gendered world, where we are ceaselessly bombarded by messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis, we face deeply ingrained beliefs that sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colors to career choice and salaries. But what does this constant gendering mean for our thoughts, decisions and behavior? And what does it mean for our brains?Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that surround us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mold our ideas of ourselved and even shape our brains. By exploring new, cutting-edge neuroscience, Rippon urges us to move beyond a binary view of the brain and to see instead this complex organ as highly individualized, profoundly adaptable and full of unbounded potential.Rigorous, timely and liberating, Gender and Our Brains has huge implications for women and men, for parents and children, and for how we identify ourselves.ReviewAn authoritative debunking of the notion of a gendered brain . . . Ultimately, her message is that a gendered world will produce a gendered brain. The result, unfortunately, is that boys and girls are shaped with different expectations and are often driven down career different paths. Well-crafted and thoroughly documented, this is a must-read for parents, teachers, and anyone of either sex who cares for children.-Kirkus, *starred review*Evidence of brain plasticity is key to Gina Rippons new book, Gender and Our Brains . . . The book is, at the core, concerned with the question of whether male and female brains are different. Where the book really shines-not surprisingly-is in the details about the science of the brain: what we know and what we do not. Rippons explanation of how weve studied the brain in the past, and how recent technological advances are giving us increasingly precise tools to do so, is endlessly interesting.-Emily Oster, The New York Times Book ReviewDense with research and point of view, the book argues that science has for too long followed erroneous logic to support the notion that men and women have different brains . . . A call to rethink moldy assumptions about the importance of sex differences . . . [and] a reminder that gender messaging is never a nonissue.-The Washington PostRippons sarcasm is surely the most savory . . . Rippon writes like a scientist, not a psychologist or philosopher. She makes an irascible but very down-to-earth guide through the thickets of such statistical properties as effect sizes and how they have been manipulated or ignored. And while she certainly deplores the likelihood that stereotypes about womens deficiencies in systematic thinking will steer many possibly gifted scholars away from STEM fields, Rippon is no solemn moralizer weeping over the sufferings of the downtrodden. (Its a relief, for a change, not to have those particular heartstrings plucked yet again.) Instead, she is exasperated and impatient at how steadfastly so many of her colleagues have pursued a point so fine it nearly vanishes from sight, how blind they are to the evident biases in their own ideas and work, and how very deeply invested they are in the status quo.-Laura Miller, SlateAdd[s] both breadth and depth to previous discussions and provides a little more ballast to the argument that nature and nurture are not so easily divisible but in dynamic interaction.-New York Journal of BooksRippon has spent decades questioning ideas that the brains of men and women are somehow fundamentally different-work that she compellingly presents in her new book . . . Rippons writing bristles with frustration that this argument still needs to be stated.-BBC.comIts a highly accessible