Читать книгу Brain Fitness for Women - Sondra Kornblatt - Страница 9

With modern parts atop old ones, the brain is like an iPod built around an eight-track cassette player.

Sharon Begley, journalist

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will chose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.

Dave Barry, humorist

By the time my daughter was eight, she was pretty blasé when people mistook her for a boy, which was a fairly common occurrence. After all, my daughter usually wore a baseball (not softball) uniform or comfortable clothes from the boys’ department—not pink or purple clothes with short, useless sleeves and lace. Her hair was short, her style was brisk, and it was perfectly logical that sales clerks, strangers in the park, and even new parents at school would assume she was a boy.

Even though it wasn't easy for strangers to tell that my daughter was a girl, she knew she was one. And even though it's not easy to tell if a young brain (in a lab, without the body) belongs to a boy or girl, the brain knows what it is—at least as far as basic reproduction. Beyond that, there are plenty of questions and plenty of opinions about whether our actions are hardwired into the gender of the brain.

We'll look at the brain and sex in this chapter and the next, after we understand a little bit about the miracle everyone has inside their skull.