A scientific look inside the female mind
- Reviewed by Hannah Wallace
Sunday, August 20, 2006
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle
The Female Brain
By Louann Brizendine
MORGAN ROAD; 279 PAGES; $24.95
In the recent movie "Click," Michael Newman (played by Adam Sandler) is stumped when his wife asks him to name the song that was playing during their first kiss. Unlike most men, Michael is able to retrieve this fact (as well as the color of her sweater) thanks to a universal remote control. He pauses, rewinds to that night, and then fast-forwards to the present, where he tells his wife the song name and then, just to prove he's not a forgetful cad, says, "And you looked beautiful in that pink sweater." Crisis averted.
A silly scene, perhaps, and one that many women in the audience probably dismissed as a hackneyed stereotype. After all, aren't there some men out there who have a memory for details from first dates, weddings and other relationship highs and lows? Not according to neuropsychologist Louann Brizendine.
In her new book, "The Female Brain," Brizendine says that women are better than men at remembering the details of emotional events because their brains are structurally and chemically different. This is not essentialist malarkey; scientists have studied living, thinking female (and male) brains with PET and MRI scans. Simply put, the hippocampus -- site of emotions and memory formation -- is larger in women, as are the brain areas for language. Men, on the other hand, have larger brain centers for action and aggression. (They also have 2 1/2 times the brain space devoted to the sexual drive, according to Brizendine.) Much of these variances start in utero, during the eighth week of pregnancy, when the then-female brain will either receive a testosterone surge or not. The screenwriters of "Click," then, weren't so far off the mark.
Those of us who grew up or came of age during the feminist revolution may find these "hardwired" biological differences hard to swallow. In the nature-versus-nurture debate, most feminists privilege nurture -- you should be able to raise a son to be gentle and emotionally nuanced, just as you can raise a daughter to be a physically active, aggressive tomboy. Brizendine, who founded the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at UCSF in 1994, was an undergrad at Berkeley during the late '70s. She knows she's tackled a controversial subject, and she addresses skeptics in the introduction: "If in the name of free will -- and political correctness -- we try to deny the influence of biology on the brain, we begin fighting our own nature," she says. "The brain is nothing if not a talented learning machine. Nothing is completely fixed. Biology powerfully affects but does not lock in our reality." In other words, even though this book makes the argument that women's behavior -- and men's -- is to some extent biologically determined, it is possible to override these behaviors.
Brizendine has compiled nearly 60 pages of references and dozens of endnotes (though they are hard to navigate because they don't have corresponding numbers in the text) to support her thesis. However, some assertions call out for a more thorough explanation, within the text. In her chapter on "Love and Trust," Brizendine claims that men fall in love "at first sight" more easily than women do. They do? How do we know this? Flipping to the endnotes, the curious reader will find the name of one study and one book, Helen Fisher's "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." What's missing is a brief explanation of the study (How many subjects where there? How long were these male lovebirds observed?) or a short summary of Fisher's relevant argument.
In her chapter on sex, Brizendine says that women are attracted to "symmetrical" men because they give women better and more frequent orgasms. Here, though she does summarize her source (it was a study of 86 sexually active 22-year-old couples), she offers no theory as to why this might be true. (Do women feel more at ease with symmetrical-looking men? Or are symmetrical-looking men, for some reason, better lovers?) And in an apparent contradiction to what she claims in an earlier chapter -- that women are wired to mate with men who will be faithful and steady -- she tells us that studies have shown that handsome (i.e., symmetrical) men cheat on their mates more often than do men with "less well-balanced bodies."
Ladies: Our choices are slim. We can either have a great sex life and expect our cute partner to be a cheat, or we can choose a "less well-balanced" man, who, though faithful, will not know what to do with a clitoris. As Brizendine herself puts it: "There are the ones for hot sex and the ones for safety, comfort, and child rearing. Women are constantly longing for both wrapped into one package, but sadly, science shows that this may be wishful thinking."
Brizendine sounds surprisingly naive elsewhere in the book as well. After speculating that, like prairie voles, some men may have a gene sequence for monogamy, Brizendine delivers this scoop: "We now know women cheat, too." One wonders how many studies Brizendine had to sift through before coming to this conclusion. And while it's fascinating to learn why women's brains get in their way of having round-the-clock sex, do we really need a neuropsychiatrist to tell us that a woman won't have sex with her partner while she's angry at him?
Though her chapters on the teen girl brain and the "mature" female brain are both riveting, Brizendine is at her best when describing the neurochemical underpinnings of passionate love. If you've ever wondered why your critical faculties shut down when you're falling in love, you'll want to read her clear description of how the amygdala (the brain's fear-alert system) and the anterior cingulate cortex (the brain's system for worrying and critical thinking) tune out when you're high on dopamine, estrogen and oxytocin. And while incurable romantics may not want to demystify the intense six- to eight-month period that kicks off most amorous relationships, they may find it helpful to know why it must ultimately come to an end.
For a scientist, Brizendine relies heavily on anecdotes. Even though she says that child development is "inextricably both" nature and nurture, she starts Chapter 1 with a vivid story of a patient who gave her 3-year-old daughter a toy fire truck instead of a doll. One afternoon, the patient walks into her child's room to find her rocking the truck and saying, "Don't worry, little truckie, everything will be all right." Though this is hardly proof that the girl's brain was hardwired for nurturing -- we don't know what other environmental influences (television, friends, babysitters, other female figures) may have shaped her -- it serves to support Brizendine's point that "there is no unisex brain."
For each anecdote she tells that reinforces a gender stereotype (a man forgets the details of his wedding day, while his wife remembers every minute of it; a sobbing woman seeks solace from her husband, but all he can do is give her a pat on the back and say, "Okay, that's enough"; a woman bites her tongue to avoid expressing anger to her husband) this reader can think of at least one exception.
And this is the biggest flaw of "The Female Brain": Brizendine does not allow for (or explain) these exceptions. Has my boyfriend, who can remember more nuances than I can about our first few dates, triumphed over "ancient wiring" by learning this "feminine" skill? Does my father, who is at ease comforting a crying woman, lack testosterone? And what of all the women I know who have short tempers? Do their brains have aberrantly large amygdalae? And on and on.
Instead of allowing for such exceptions, Brizendine pretends they're not there. In the end, this undermines her argument. Yes, men and women's brains are different; but within each gender, you'll find a wide range of behaviors -- and to ignore this fact is to present a narrow view of human experience.
Hannah Wallace is a Brooklyn, N.Y., writer.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/20/RVG45KGJOH1.DTL
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle
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