No brainer

"I note the bad effects of too much alcohol on my liver, kidneys, etc. that you say medical science mentions, but I don’t care about those. I want to know if too much alcohol would have a direct adverse effect on my brain." That was the last question in a series of e-mails I received from an e-mail sender whom I will call "Frank." But I did respond to that last e-mail. I even made sure he knew that I admired his remarkable persistence in completely ignoring the fact that he needs his body, which contains his liver, kidneys, etc., to carry the head that he wanted so much to safeguard. But I wish he were somewhere near Dr. J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, Canada when Rushton recently looked at 100,000 subjects and found that males, on the average, surpass females by 3.6 IQ points. Frank may not have skewed Rushton’s statistical findings, but Frank’s remarks would have been enough to cross Rushton’s eyes.

Dr. Rushton has been spending a good portion of his career coming up with ways to measure the human brain, other than putting a string around one’s forehead and marking it. The problem is there have been very few brain donors (shucks), resulting in a reported shortage lately. Those who did not sign consent forms from historical time had no choice but only left their skulls in sediments for archaeologists to study. Some scientists like Rushton measure brain size by sizing up the space inside the skull cavity reserved for the brain or some do indirect measurements that has to do with measuring bones related to skull development. Based on studies, on the average, a male brain is supposed to weigh about 1.25 kg and the female human brain weighing 100 grams less than that; and even if you adjust for body size (since on the average women have smaller body frames than men), men still have five percent more brain. However, studies revealed, too, that this is made up for by the fact that women have more cells concentrated in their prefrontal lobes, where most thinking such as judgment, language and planning, happens.

Assuming that difference in size may have an effect on intelligence, Dr. Rushton and his colleague, Douglas Jackson, came up with yet another way to measure intelligence among males and females. For this, they subjected the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores of 60,000 females and 40,000 males, aged 17 to 18, to a standard weighted test analysis for intelligence called the "g-factor." The "g-factor" is something that would require higher cognitive process, more than just "parroting" skills. Based on the study found in the current issue of the journal Intelligence, Livescience.com’s Jeanna Bryner reports that Dr. Rushton thinks this is good evidence that the more brain you have, the higher your IQ is and according to his findings, the males are smarter.

But Rushton, we have a problem, and not because this writer belongs to a gender once described by famous smart male Thomas Edison as "not capable of direct thought" and ought to benefit from electricity to straighten her gender’s brain out. Rushton’s research clashes head on with previous research which found that the difference in the gray and white matter of men and women accounts for the differences in the way intelligence is processed in the genders but NOT in their IQ results (NeuroImage, January 2005, study by Richard Haier, University of California Irvine and his colleagues at UCI and the University of New Mexico). Also, in the journal Brain in December 2005, a study by Dr. Sandra Witelson from McMaster University in Ontario, found the size of the brains of dead men and women (whose cause of death had nothing to do with their brains) were correlated with aspects of "intelligence" such as language and spatial reasoning, and whose "intelligence scores" were recorded when they were still alive. Their findings: bigger brains did INDEED mean smarter REGARDLESS of gender. The differences rest only on the way brain size correlates with, for example, verbal reasoning or spatial ability in each of the genders. But there is no saying that one aspect of intelligence is a better indicator of general intelligence than another. More importantly, over the age span of 25 to 80 years, it was found that men’s brains shrunk with age while women’s brains were hardly affected by age.

The brain is composed of gray and white matter (with the gray actually colored pink when still attached to a working body – OK, Frank?). Gray and white do not sit on top of or next to each other like ice cream scoops in a parfait. In essence, they are melded into each other with the gray having the neural cavities that hold information while the white matter nestles the shawl that enables electrical information to be passed on in the circuitry. Without each other, cheese would have more activity than your brain. In the NeuroImage article I cited, it was mentioned that men have 6.5 times more gray matter related to general intelligence than women while women have 10 times more white matter related to general intelligence than men. If Rushton’s findings are on the mark and 6.5 times more gray matter meant a 3.6 IQ advantage points for 17- to 18-year-old males in SAT scores, what happens when they reach the shrinkage years shown to begin at age 25? Do they grow more advantage somewhere else in their anatomy like bats that when found to have smaller brains were found to have bigger hmm, shall we say, "bat signs"?

But take comfort our dear men because Nature knows and understands your burden, and even without your testosterone-pitched petitions, she will figure out a way to balance and ease the weight of genius on your heads. And you know what, you will not even know it because her life-balancing force is somehow built in your very nature. So she does it so gracefully by simply allowing you to be yourselves. This is, in fact, reliably demonstrated year after year by your distinguished members who faithfully continue to hold the overwhelming majority of the awardees in a, shall we say, "life fitness contest" (Darwin Awards). One male awardee, Pierre Pumpille, wanted to prove to women the formidable density of his own head by trying to headbutt a parked car, issuing a statement in his hospital bed –"Women thought I was a god." Well, Monsieur Pumpille, I was not there but the women you referred to most likely did think you were quite a sight but not in the neighborhood of a deity. Another male awardee (after a few drinks in a bar – Frank, please note again) cut one of his toes with a chainsaw as part of what they called "men’s games." But these two would bow their heads to Krystof Azninski if, well Azninski had a head. You see, not to be outdone in these "men’s games" by the toe-cutter, Azninski grabbed the chainsaw and cut his own head off. But of course, this only occurred after such cerebrally uplifting discourse as hitting each other with frozen turnips. Incredible geniuses in their own unique category, the stories that earned them Darwin awards, are all confirmed true. You can read about them at www.darwinawards.com.

So Dr. Rushton, as much as you did cite that this remarkable edge of male intelligence figures only in winning the Nobel Prize and not in everyday life, you may want to look at how these remarkable Darwin Award episodes could also occur so prominently and much more frequently as the workings of the "gray parliaments" of men. While you do, the "white parliamentarians," including this writer, will struggle with our 100-gram deprived brains to fathom those extraordinary male idiocies and resoundingly clap year after year, as men garner the top Darwin Awards posthumously. Mind you, dear men, we shall do it with unwavering gratitude, as you improve the gene pool by your sheer volunteerism.

* * *

For comments, e-mail [email protected]