BRAINS

Topic 11: What makes a male or female brain?

Dr. Cindy Forehand is Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Vermont (UVM) College of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University in St Louis before joining the faculty at UVM in 1987. Her research interests are in brain and spinal cord development, with a focus on the autonomic nervous system. She is Co-Director of the Center for Biomedical Research Excellence in Neuroscience at UVM, which is funded by the National Center for Research Resources. Dr. Forehand is also the Director of the Foundations level of the Vermont Integrated Curriculum (VIC) for medical students and directs the VIC Neuroscience course. She teaches neuroscience to graduate and undergraduate students in traditional courses and in laboratory science classes.
Check out these websites to get yourself up to speed on Neurobiology. If you have other articles or sites you've seen, please contact Lifelong Learning Coordinator Linda Bowden at lbowden@echovermont.org so that we can update our website to include your research!

The following are some easily understood articles on male/female brain:

He Thinks, She Thinks.
It’s not what you expect: Women are more resilient, men more focused. She navigates by landmarks, he by internal compass. Our differences are surprising—and profound.

Girl Brain - Boy Brain.
The two are not the same, but new work shows just how wrong it is to assume that all gender differences are hardwired.

Explanation of differences in the brains of males vs females

Sex differences in the brain

Here are some questions that can be posed at the event:

• What does sexually dimorphic mean?

• Do differences in the brain outweigh similarities?

• How do hormones control whether your brain is male or female?

• Are chromosomes important in development of brain gender?

• Is gender binary?

• Can environmental toxins alter sexual differentiation of the brain?

Specific references from Professor Forehand
that form the basis of the Cafe Sci presentation:

Why sex matters for neuroscience. Cahill L. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2006 Jun;7(6):477-84. Review.

Sexual differentiation of the vertebrate nervous system. Morris JA, Jordan CL, Breedlove SM. Nat Neurosci. 2004 Oct;7(10):1034-9. Review.

Sex chromosomes and brain gender. Arnold AP. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2004 Sep;5(9):701-8. Review.

Early androgen influences on human neural and behavioural development. Hines M. Early Hum Dev. 2008 Dec;84(12):805-7. Epub 2008 Oct 19. Review.

Building a scientific framework for studying hormonal effects on behavior and on the development of the sexually dimorphic nervous system. Li AA, Baum MJ, McIntosh LJ, Day M, Liu F, Gray LE Jr.

Neurotoxicology. 2008 May;29(3):504-19. Epub 2008 Mar 18. Review.

Layperson overviews of brain development and core concepts in neuroscience:

http://www.sfn.org/skins/main/pdf/brainfacts/2008/brain_development.pdf  Brain Development pdf. Freely available with permission to distribute from Society for Neuroscience

http://www.sfn.org/skins/main/pdf/core_concepts/core_concepts.pdf  Neuroscience Core Concepts pdf. Freely available with permission to distribute from Society for Neuroscience

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985854,00.html  Fertile Minds story on brain Development 1997 (illustrations not included anywhere that I can find)

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