Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do About It

beth — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Given the heavy media coverage about studies that “prove” significant, inborn differences between males and females, it is no surprise that we excuse or accept certain behaviors depending on whether they come from a boy or a girl. We are often led to believe that it is natural for a boy to be athletic and for a girl to demonstrate more empathy because it is part of their biology and something that cannot be helped one way or another. If this were true, we would have to resign ourselves to our appropriate gender roles and stick to the activities and behaviors assigned to us by nature.

Not so, says Eliot. Right off the bat, Pink Brain, Blue Brain shows us that we must examine these studies critically in order to appreciate their message. Eliot goes through various popular studies with a fine-toothed comb and comes away with a vastly different interpretation of the data. Rather than proving innate differences between boys and girls, instead we see that these differences are really not as large as they appear and that the outcomes have been subtly manipulated and phrased in ways that present the results as far more provocative, and therefore popular with the media.

After a close scrutiny of the studies, Eliot goes on to investigate the various claims of the differences between boys and girls starting at conception and ending around puberty. Though she is a neuroscientist, Eliot provides well thought out sociological critiques along with useful explanations of biology. She fuses both the nature and nurture aspects of development to show that gender gaps are not just innate or taught, but oftentimes both. What nature instills, society tends to exaggerate. The consequences are that these gender stereotypes become self-fulfilling prophecies, and this hurts both boys and girls.

Particularly useful to those who strive to raise well-balanced children are the ideas and tips that Eliot includes at the end of nearly every chapter. For instance, she recommends pet care as a way to teach and encourage a sense of nurturing in young boys. Likewise, she suggests getting girls involved in chess in order to help foster a healthy dose of competition and to improve spatial analysis skills. We may have been dealt a specific set of cards at birth, but this by no means should limit us in what we achieve and how we excel.

Written by: Shana Mattson, January 4th 2011

Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist's Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Kelly Lambert

Basic Books

"Depression hurts," chimes the television announcer. Most people have been depressed at some point in their lives, whether from a life-changing event or simply a bad patch of circumstance. I am willing to wager that if you haven’t been there yourself, you know someone who has suffered from depression. The pharmaceutical industry is now doling out pills to treat depression and a large portion of our population is taking them, some with marked results, some going from pill to pill searching for the perfect cocktail that will relieve them of pain and anxiety, fear and restlessness.

In her book Lifting Depression, Kelly Lambert explores the reasons why people born in the middle of the twentieth century are ten times more likely to suffer from major depression compared to people born in the early twentieth century. Why, in our modern day convenience-filled society, do people seem to be so ill at ease? Dr. Lambert is the chair of psychology at Randolph-Macon College and President of the Behavioral Neuroscience Society, and her research has been featured on ABC’s World News Tonight and in Scientific American Mind.

In one experiment she conducted with rats, some had to work hard for rewards while others, dubbed the "trust fund rats," were simply given the treats. After five weeks, the hardworking rats were sixty percent more persistent in trying to work on a new task. She describes this as "learned persistence," and theorizes that coming from our agrarian roots, the human brain receives stimulation from doing concrete tasks like working with our hands, and accomplishing something you can hold as the fruit of your labor, "effort driven rewards."

Lambert's studies find that engaging the effort driven rewards circuit of your brain appears to be equivalent to taking a dose of the most powerful antidepressants. With this in mind, she suggests that something like "behavioral activation therapy" can work to retrain your brain to be happier in the long term. With this form of therapy, a person learns how to alter their behavioral responses to situations and even change their environments to stimulate the brain into feeling more rewarded and therefore relieving the subject of their depression.

Lambert is not advocating the end of pharmaceutical intervention to lift someone out of a lethargic and depressed state. But she maintains that without some other form of therapy, or alteration in activities, a person could simply remain on these drugs, without ever being able to get out of the cycle completely.

Lifting Depression is not only a valuable addition to the field of psychology in an academic sense, but it is also a readable guide book that I would recommend to anyone struggling with depression or seeking to understand how they could offer better guidance to a person who is.

It seems so simple, to engage in exercise, to take up knitting or woodworking as a way to engage the brain in a new rewards program that will assist in finding happiness. But if it is so simple, (and inexpensive!), then why are most people advised by their healthcare providers to just pop the pill and carry on as usual?

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 7th 2010

neuroscience

Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do About It

Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist's Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power