On the list of active blogs on ResearchBlogging.org as of Friday, September 17, sorted by gender of authors, Dr Shock is number two on Blogs with male authors. First is Research Digest Blog.
Despite the fact that women are getting science PhDs in nearly the same numbers as men, they are blogging much less. I even looked at the average number of posts about peer-reviewed research they had done, and again, men outpaced women by nearly 50 percent, which means men may have written as many as 80 percent of the posts on ResearchBlogging.org.
Read the whole story about this discrepancy on Seed Magazine
Sheryl WuDunn’s book “Half the Sky” investigates the oppression of women globally. Her stories shock. Only when women in developing countries have equal access to education and economic opportunity will we be using all our human resources.
Women process threats and aggressive stimuli different than men, differences in the activation of brain regions participating in the fear circuitry. This might be an important factor contributing to the increased likelihood of women to develop panic disorder compared to men. If in women activation differs in parts of the fear circuitry, this could explain the gender difference in prevalence of the panic disorder.
Fear Circuitry in the Brain
dysfunctional fear network centered in the amygdala and projecting to the thalamus, hypothalamus, brainstem, and prefrontal cortical areas in Panic Disorder patients
In a recent study 20 patients with panic disorder (12 women and 8 men) were shown images depicting fearful, angry, happy, and neutral expressions of 10 individuals (5 males and 5 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging.
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As hypothesized, women showed significantly stronger activation during the processing of threat-related stimuli in a large number of cortical and subcortical areas related to the established fear circuitry
These differences to a lesser extend are also present in healthy subjects. In panic disorder these gender-related activation differences in several neural structures seem to increase compared to healthy subjects.
Patricia Ohrmann, M.D.,, Anya Pedersen, Ph.D., Miriam Braun, M.D.,, Jochen Bauer, M.Sc.,, Harald Kugel, Ph.D.,, Anette Kersting, M.D.,, Katharina Domschke, M.D.,, Jurgen Deckert, M.D.,, & Thomas Suslow, Ph.D. (2010). EFFECT OF GENDER ON PROCESSING
THREAT-RELATED STIMULI IN PATIENTS
WITH PANIC DISORDER: SEX DOES MATTER Depression & Anxiety : 10.1002/da.20721
Although 50% of women receive graduate degrees in biology in the US only 27% of faculty members is female. In Europe conditions are far worse on academic careers for women, especially in the medical academic workforce.
Only 1 in 10 medical clinical professors are women in the United Kingdom (UK). No female professor was employed in 6 medical schools. The newer medical schools had a better gender balance than some of the more established schools.
For the lower ranks in medical academia these numbers are somewhat higher but still much lower than for men.
In FTEs lecturers in 2005: 36% were women, senior lecturers and readers: 25% were women. In 2005 there were a total of 3365 clinical academics, of whom 21% were women.
Frontal lobes is the shorthand for the prefrontal cortex. It’s an important part of the human brain, the conductor of the large orchestra called the brain. It’s the seat of our executive functioning. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social “control” (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes).
Men and women differ in decision making strategy. They tested humans with the cognitive bias test for decision making. In this test you’re presented with three geometric forms. One target and two choices. You’re asked after showing the target geometric figure which of the other two you “liked the most”. Women tend to choose more context independent, meaning that they mostly choose the other figures based on stable preferences. They always picked blue or red, square or circle. Men choose context dependent, meaning they match their choice to the target. As the targets changed so did their choices. Although their was an overlap between the two curves the difference between gender was robust and significant.
The book gave an excellent example. Women tend to always save 5% of their income, for men this is different. If his monthly income is below a certain amount he saves nothing, if it’s the usual he will save about 5%, if the income is higher he will save 10%. The optimal strategy is probably a dynamic balance between both. Novel situations mostly prefer the context dependent strategy, the “default strategy”. Neither strategy is better than the other, a balance depending on the situation is best.
Other gender differences in frontal lobes:
Protrusion of the right frontal pole over the left is more common in men
Frontal cortical thickness of the left and right frontal cortex is the same in women but right thicker than left in men
Estrogen receptors are symmetrically distributed across the frontal lobes in women, not in men
It’s probable that the frontal lobes are functionally different between men and women.
This post is about the neurobiological gender differences in empathy. For a description and definition of empathy which isn’t always strait forward please read about it in this previous post: Patient Doctor Relationship Series: Empathy. This post is one of many on the subject.
A number of studies suggest that women may be more empathic than man, on average this is obviously true. From experience alone this statement seems reasonable. Nevertheless, some men can be more empathic than women but overall women are more empathic.
A number of brain regions have been suggested to be involved in empathy. Two recent studies were published on brain regions and gender differences in empathy.
Many brain regions are involved in empathy. The strongest evidence suggests the involvement of the medial frontal lobes. Involvement of the right parietal region is also suggested. That’s why some researchers believe that the right hemisphere is more involved in empathy than the “cognitive” left hemisphere. Left versus right brain discussions are summarized in this statement:
And while brain research confirms that both sides of the brain are involved in nearly every human activity, we do know that the left side of the brain is the seat of language and processes in a logical and sequential order. The right side is more visual and processes intuitively, holistically, and randomly. Most people seem to have a dominant side. A key word is that our dominance is a preference, not an absolute
But is this left right brain discussion also involved in gender differences in empathy. Is the right hemisphere more involved in empathy compared to the left hemisphere? Moreover, does this explain that women may be more empathic than man?
While some previous studies have suggested a special role for the right hemisphere in empathy, others have not found this asymmetry. Given the fact that many studies have reported gender differences in empathy, it is quite possible that the relative role of the right hemisphere could differ by gender.
One study examined individual differences in right hemisphere activation and empathy in a large sample to test for possible gender differences. Besides using empathy scales to score the amount of empathy the researchers also used the Levy Chimeric Face Task to measure right hemisphere activation. This test requires participants to choose the happier of two chimeric faces (faces with one side smiling and the other side showing a neutral expression). Previous studies have demonstrated that right-handed participants (regardless of gender) tend to chose the chimeric face with the smile to their left more often than the chimeric face with the smile to their right. The right hemisphere is more susceptible for faces and emotional expression. This causes a bias in attention to the left side of space. This test measures the involvement of the right hemisphere in emotion.
In this study participants tended to pay more attention to the left side of chimeric faces comparable to previous studies and women scored higher in empathy than men. Men and women did differ in the correlation between that task and empathy, as measured
by the empathy scale (MEEQ), suggesting a correlation between right hemisphere activation and empathy in women.
Two difficulties arose during this trial. There was also a significant effect on the testing format. Participants tested in the paper and pencil format showed a stronger leftward bias than those completing the task with the faces projected on to a screen. It’s also possible that the empathy scale used or right hemisphere specialization influenced the outcome.
Another study looked at brain activation during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
In short, subjects viewed synthetic emotional faces expressing either fear or anger. They were asked to either concentrate on their own feelings that emerged when they were looking at an emotional facial expression (SELF-task), or evaluate the emotional state expressed by a stimulus face (OTHER-task). After the presentation of each face, a list of four one or two word descriptions appeared on the screen. The task of the subjects was to choose from this list of words the description which best depicted either the emotional state expressed by the preceding face (OTHER-task) or the own emotional response of the subject to the stimulus face (SELF-task)
This was done during fMRI in two separate runs. The data suggest that the mirror neuron system is activated during tasks in both males and females. However, activation was stronger in females in the right inferior frontal cortex. This region is also one of the regions with mirror neurons. Females recruit regions containing mirror neurons to a higher degree than males. Males rely more on the left temporoparietal region.
In conclusion females use different strategies for assessing emotions than males. It could be that men more often use the left cognitive hemisphere in empathy and women the more emotional parts such as the mirror neurons in the right hemisphere. Again on average. These are correlation studies not causation studies. What do you think?
From recent research we learn that online shopping is not as attractive or appealing to women as it is towards men. Women have more positive attitude towards conventional shopping than online shopping. Men’s attitude doesn’t differ between online of conventional shopping. Personally I like to Take The Coupon to buy some really nice cloth mainly because it’s easy, fast and convenient, you can shop when you want to anywhere you want to. There’s a gender gap in online shopping. More men than women engage in online shopping and make online purchases while in the offline world women love to shop. Take a look at these custom wristbands.
Until recently, when Bing Digital started doing it very few studies were done on gender differences in online shopping and gender differences in online shopping attitude.
On the cognitive level which is the most important in the attitude of women towards online shopping, women still are skeptical towards online shopping, they tend to fear risks and threats associated with online shopping.
Thus, businesses aiming to attract more female online consumers need to focus their efforts on increasing females’ awareness of the benefits associated with online shopping this is the reason why more stores are implementing the gift cards system the result are being reflected in the revenue of the stores.
On the affective level women don’t like online shopping due to the lack of social interaction, a shopping center is something that they prefer. This could be improved by supplying chat possibilities, forums or other forms of sharing experiences. Website design is also more important for women. It should show unity and fun to play with.
Differences between men and women in shopping online and offline:
Men usually have more favorable perceptions of the website design, security, e-loyalty, website trust, website satisfaction than women in online shopping.
Men spend more time and money on online purchases
Men’s attitude towards shopping is much the same to offline shopping while women’s attitude change substantially and like online shopping far less than offline shopping.
Women prefer physical evaluation of products more than men which is not possible for online purchases
Products for online purchases are more associated with men such as electronics, computers, and trucker hat varieties. Women tend to buy food, home decor and clothing and Vessi vegan shoes for men and women which is far less available for online purchase
For women the social part of shopping is lacking with online shopping, no face to face contact or social interaction is possible with online shopping
Men prefer convenience over social interaction
Sometimes buying things online is very expensive, get coupons and discounts with technomono, where you can find everything you’ll need or want.
Sounds very plausible to me, what do you think?
Hasan, B. (2010). Exploring gender differences in online shopping attitude Computers in Human Behavior DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2009.12.012
Time for a round up of some posts around gender and medical education. This list are posts about this subject all starting with a link to the original post.
Gender and Medical Textbooks. Current medical textbooks do not consistently integrate gender-related aspects of coronary heart disease, depression and alcohol abuse, thereby omitting information. When it is available, information mainly applies to epidemiological data and reproduction.
A Portrait of Depression in Mass Media, Gender Influences. This study not only shows that certain traditional gender norms still persist in mass media representation of men and women suffering from depression, it also challenges some of these gender norms.
25% of Medical women students experience sexual harassment. In the international literature reports of sexual harassment of medical women students fluctuate between 18-60%. The authors state that the incidence is relatively low in The Netherlands.
6 Reasons why Female Doctors won’t Reach Senior Ranks The suggestion is that feminisation of the medical workforce will degrade professional leadership, status and influence because women will compromise career aspirations for parenthood.
Women Doctors more often wear White Coats in Media Portrayals. The author of the letter to the editor in Medical Education asks herself if women still need to wear a white coat to be recognized as doctors and not be mistaken for nurses. Such images may maintain and reinforce gender inequalities. High-prestige specialties such as cardiology and neurosurgery are dominated by men, whereas psychiatry, dermatology and geriatrics are dominated by women.
Women in the medical academic workforce. Only 1 in 10 medical clinical professors are women in the United Kingdom (UK). No female professor was employed in 6 medical schools. The newer medical schools had a better gender balance than some of the more established schools.
Gorman, J M (2006). Gender Differences in Depression and Response to
Psychotropic Medication Gender Medicine, 3 (2) DOI: 16860269
Gender differences in response to treatment
Several articles have explored the topic of gender differences in terms of response to antidepressants. In a 12-week multicenter, double-blind, randomized, parallel-group comparative trial pre-menopausal females showed higher response rates when taking sertraline, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), while men show higher response rates when taking imipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA), and post-menopausal females show similar response rates for both antidepressants (Kornstein et al., 2000).
It was concluded that women might respond better to SSRIs than to TCAs and that there is indeed a difference in response rate by menopausal status (Kornstein et al., 2000).
The results of most previous studies are comparable to this trial (Martenyi et al., 2001)(Raskin, 1974)(Davidson and Pelton, 1986)(Grigoriadis et al., 2003)(Thase et al., 2005)(Khan et al., 2005)(Berlanga and Flores-Ramos, 2006).
In a recent study with a large sample of real world patients from primary and psychiatric specialty care centers women were more likely to reach remission and response with citalopram than men (Young et al., 2008).
On the other hand, complementary studies have failed to find different response rates to antidepressants between men and women. Quitkin et al., performed a retrospective analysis on depressed outpatients (the majority with atypical depression) and concluded that the statistical significant difference in response rates to TCAs and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) based on gender and menopausal status was not clinically relevant (Quitkin et al., 2002).
Similarly, other studies concluded that there is no difference in antidepressant treatment response based on gender (Scheibe et al., 2003)(Hildebrandt et al., 2003)(Wohlfarth et al., 2004)(Thiels et al., 2005) or on menopausal status (Cassano et al., 2005).
Overall the conclusions regarding the influence of gender and menopausal status on antidepressant treatment response in depressed patients are inconsistent
References
Berlanga, C. & Flores-Ramos, M. (2006) Different gender response to serotonergic and noradrenergic antidepressants. A comparative study of the efficacy of citalopram and reboxetine. J Affect Disord, 95, 119-23.
Cassano, P., Soares, C. N., Cusin, C., Mascarini, A., Cohen, L. S. & Fava, M. (2005) Antidepressant response and well-being in pre-, peri- and postmenopausal women with major depressive disorder treated with fluoxetine. Psychother Psychosom, 74, 362-5.
Davidson, J. & Pelton, S. (1986) Forms of atypical depression and their response to antidepressant drugs. Psychiatry Res, 17, 87-95.
Grigoriadis, S., Kennedy, S. H. & Bagby, R. M. (2003) A comparison of antidepressant response in younger and older women. J Clin Psychopharmacol, 23, 405-7.
Hildebrandt, M. G., Steyerberg, E. W., Stage, K. B., Passchier, J., Kragh-Soerensen, P. & Danish University Antidepressant Group. (2003) Are gender differences important for the clinical effects of antidepressants? Am J Psychiatry, 160, 1643-50.
Khan, A., Brodhead, A. E., Schwartz, K. A., Kolts, R. L. & Brown, W. A. (2005) Sex differences in antidepressant response in recent antidepressant clinical trials. J Clin Psychopharmacol, 25, 318-24.
Kornstein, S. G. (1997) Gender differences in depression: implications for treatment. J Clin Psychiatry, 58 Suppl 15, 12-8.
Kornstein, S. G., Schatzberg, A. F., Thase, M. E., Yonkers, K. A., Mccullough, J. P., Keitner, G. I., Gelenberg, A. J., Davis, S. M., Harrison, W. M. & Keller, M. B. (2000) Gender differences in treatment response to sertraline versus imipramine in chronic depression. Am J Psychiatry, 157, 1445-52.
Martenyi, F., Dossenbach, M., Mraz, K. & Metcalfe, S. (2001) Gender differences in the efficacy of fluoxetine and maprotiline in depressed patients: a double-blind trial of antidepressants with serotonergic or norepinephrinergic reuptake inhibition profile. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol, 11, 227-32.
Quitkin, F. M., Stewart, J. W., Mcgrath, P. J., Taylor, B. P., Tisminetzky, M. S., Petkova, E., Chen, Y., Ma, G. & Klein, D. F. (2002) Are there differences between women’s and men’s antidepressant responses? Am J Psychiatry, 159, 1848-54.
Rasgon, N. L., Dunkin, J., Fairbanks, L., Altshuler, L. L., Troung, C., Elman, S., Wroolie, T. E., Brunhuber, M. V. & Rapkin, A. (2007) Estrogen and response to sertraline in postmenopausal women with major depressive disorder: a pilot study. J Psychiatr Res, 41, 338-43.
Raskin, A. (1974) Age-sex differences in response to antidepressant drugs. J Nerv Ment Dis, 159, 120-30.
Scheibe, S., Preuschhof, C., Cristi, C. & Bagby, R. M. (2003) Are there gender differences in major depression and its response to antidepressants? J Affect Disord, 75, 223-35.
Thase, M. E., Entsuah, R., Cantillon, M. & Kornstein, S. G. (2005) Relative antidepressant efficacy of venlafaxine and SSRIs: sex-age interactions. J Womens Health (Larchmt), 14, 609-16.
Thiels, C., Linden, M., Grieger, F. & Leonard, J. (2005) Gender differences in routine treatment of depressed outpatients with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor sertraline. Int Clin Psychopharmacol, 20, 1-7.
Wohlfarth, T., Storosum, J. G., Elferink, A. J., Van Zwieten, B. J., Fouwels, A. & Van Den Brink, W. (2004) Response to tricyclic antidepressants: independent of gender? Am J Psychiatry, 161, 370-2.
Young, E. A., Kornstein, S. G., Marcus, S. M., Harvey, A. T., Warden, D., Wisniewski, S. R., Balasubramani, G. K., Fava, M., Trivedi, M. K. & Rush, J.A. (2008) Sex differences in response to citalopram: A STAR*D report
Continuing research is needed to determine how gender influences the risk, clinical presentation, and response to treatment of depression. Exploration of sex differences in animals and humans should aid in efforts to treat depression as an organic disorder rather than a psychological maladaptation.
While playing video games on a computer men generally exhibit greater activation of the mesocorticolimbic reward circuitry and also greater connectivity. Male were more effective in gaining space and learned the implicit goal faster than females. This was the only observed gender difference in performance.
The mesolimbic pathway is thought to be involved in producing pleasurable feeling, and is often associated with feelings of reward and desire, particularly because of the connection to the nucleus accumbens, which is also associated with these states. Recent research has pointed towards this pathway being involved in incentive salience rather than euphoric mood states.
A possible explanation for this finding is that the goal to ‘‘gain more space” in this game acted as a reward for males relative to females, whether or not it was consciously perceived as rewarding by the subjects. This significant association between goal achievement and learning and brain activation
profile occurs predominantly in males in this study.
The researchers excluded possible confounds due to neuropsychological profiles, lower-level motor performance, and computer and video-game experience.
This study was a functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasting a space-infringement game with a control condition. The aim was to compare males and females and preform fMRI imaging during active and control situation while playing a video game.
This result could explain why females do not play computer games as much as men. They don’t seem to find playing video games as rewarding as men.
Other explanations for this gender differences are:
Boys and girls are treated differently online, with girls experiencing more unpleasant interactions. An overtly hostile environment toward women could be a reason more women do not play computer games.
Overall, the roles women play in the games are stereotyped and secondary to male characters.
These stereotypes were researched recently in an online survey conducted on women who played computer games and women who used the computer but did not play computer games.
The results:
It appears that women who do not play games experience more sexual harassment online, and that women who play games less experience more sexual harassment online. Moreover, women only play video games online, not chatting, they experience significantly less sexual harassment online.
Women who game at the exclusion of chatting and vice versa did not differ in sex role stereotyping.
Women who chatted without gaming were more accepting of interpersonal violence than women who gamed without chatting. This is not expected. The hypothesis was that women gaming would be more accepting to interpersonal violence.
Women who play computer games have no more masculine gender identities than women who use chat rooms only.
Women who play computer games are no more aggressive than women who use computers for chat rooms but do not play computer games.
In conclusion:
Women who played computer games perceived their online environments as less friendly but experienced less sexual harassment online, were more aggressive themselves, and did not differ in gender identity, degree of sex role stereotyping, or acceptance of sexual violence when compared to women who used the computer but did not play video games
Probably there are more women online playing video games than men realize. Maybe using gender neutral aliases. F HOEFT, C WATSON, S KESLER, K BETTINGER, A REISS (2008). Gender differences in the mesocorticolimbic system during computer game-play Journal of Psychiatric Research, 42 (4), 253-258 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2007.11.010 Norris, K O (2004). Gender Stereotypes, Aggression, and Computer Games: An Online Survey of Women CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7 (6), 714-727 DOI: 15687807
