more human behavior stuff

Wandering deeper into the thicket of human behavior, thoughts about connections between gender, anger, amygdala, oxytocin. (And probably serotonin, cortisol, dopamine, etc., while we're at it :-) .)

While reading about the amygdala, I came across this idea that womens' amygdalae respond differently than mens' do to fear-inducing stimuli (ooh, two Latin plurals in one sentence! What do I win?) From this article in the University of California Newsletter written in April, 2006:

Larry Cahill, an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, and Lisa Kilpatrick, a former postdoctoral fellow in his laboratory, have found that the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure found on both sides of the brain, behaves very differently in males and females while the subjects are at rest. In men, the right amygdala is more active and shows more connections with other regions of the brain, even when there is no outside stimulus. Conversely, in women, the left amygdala is more connected with other regions of the brain. In addition, the regions of the brain with which the amygdala communicates while a subject is at rest are different in men and women.

Given the tendency of most 'science' on any gender topic to fan the flames of the endless battle between the sexes (with women usually on the losing end), I was immediately annoyed. But always looking for 'truth', such as it is and what there is of it, I dug in further. Knowledge being power and all that. And of course remembering, always, that so-called 'knowledge' about dang near anything that's this speculative is subject to change at any moment without notice. I'm sure there's some saying in the scientific community about this that's apropos. Maybe it's really just that even 'science' isn't immune to the use of anecdata, aka 'cherry picking'. Or as Mark Twain said, "There's three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

So here I am digging away with Google. Found this interesting piece of writing by a guy who seems to have already done a fair amount of thinking along the lines I'm exploring here: Bringing Oxytocin Into The Room: Notes On The Neurophysiology Of Conflict. Needs more cogitation before I'll have much to say about that one, I think.

Another link to monkeys' sense of fairness, Monkey Economics. No quotes just now.