The Brain Game

Produced

• Nov. 2002

Key Features

The Brain Game includes a leader's guide that has two workshops, one on Teamwork and one on Communication.

The video opens with a married couple in their car; one notices how differently they navigate directions getting around town. Dr. Helen Fisher, an expert in gender differences, explains how women orient around landmarks and objects, while men orient around distances and street names. The scene then shifts to the couple's children, as the on-camera expert explains how gender differences are noticeable at a very early age.

A scientific discussion of brain differences follows:

• female brains are about 10 percent smaller than male brains
• male-female IQs are the same
• the world's highest IQ belongs to a women
• male brains are wired to move information quickly within each hemisphere of the brain, giving them better spatial abilities
• in women's brains, the cerebral cortex -- linked to language, judgment and memory - are more densely packed with nerve cells than men's brains; this allows women to process this type of information more quickly
• women have a large connective tissue, corpus callosum, between the brain hemispheres, which means that women's two sides are interconnected better, giving them the ability to multitask easily, while men do better at focusing on one thing at a time

Scientists are developing new ways, such as Functional MRIs, of looking inside the working brain to see how its wired. Blood flow and electrical activity are different in male and female brains, as demonstrated in the video. Men's ability to focus on one area works better for spatial tests, while women's interconnected brain functions better on verbal tests.

These differences begin in the womb, and are influenced hormones. For the first nine weeks as a fetus, male and female brains are identical. After that, testosterone in the male fetus changes his brain development so that it is no longer identical to a female brain. Studies with infants show these brain differences at a very early age, demonstrating convincingly that many male/female differences are hardwired into the brain, and are not culturally conditioned.

Child development expert Michael Lewis and biologist Anne Fausto Sterling debate the "nature versus nurture" theories of brain development, offering evidence on both sides of the argument. Differences in behavior at school leads to differences in career choices between men and women.

The video concludes with Dr. Lewis summarizing that we are born with dispositions as male and female, but than environments can certainly alter them. The brain is not a static organ - it's changing throughout our lives, giving us role flexibility and choices in how we live, work, and use our brains.

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