Lead on, oh Kinky Turtle

Women aren’t from Venus after all: Popular culture tells us that women and men’s brains are just different. It’s true that male and female hormones affect brain development differently, and imaging studies have found brain differences in the ways women and men feel pain, make social decisions and cope with stress. The extent to which these differences are genetic versus shaped by experience — the old nature-versus-nurture debate — is unknown. But for the most part, male and female brains (and brainpower) are similar. A 2005 American Psychologist analysis of research on gender differences found that in 78 percent of gender differences reported in other studies, the effect of gender on the behavior was in the small or close-to-zero range. And recent studies have debunked myths about the genders’ divergent abilities. A study published in the January 2010 Psychological Bulletin looked at almost half a million boys and girls from 69 countries and found no overall gap in math ability. Focusing on our differences may make for catchy book titles, but in neuroscience, nothing is ever that simple.