Blame It on My Hippocampus

"If you're a girl, you've been programmed to make sure you keep social harmony. This is a matter of life and death to the brain..."

Louann Brizendine, M.D. The Female Brain

I've been pondering my brain as of late. Being able to reflect on your own structure must be one of the real perks of being human (along with drinking coffee, of course). Perhaps other species have the same gift, but since we haven't seen any research on brain function in pandas undertaken by pandas, or "Lancet" abstracts examining the interplay of neurotransmitters and cognitive development in wallabies submitted by wallabies, we are left to conclude that we, alone in the animal kingdom, have that miraculous ability. And even if we do not have an exclusive talent for brain self-reflection (maybe starfish do consider the implications of a missing prefrontal cortex and are just private about it), we can still feel special that we possess an alphabet and the right sort of paws to write about our experience.

This seems like some compensation from Nature for lacking a sexy snow leopard tail, or a Thoroughbred's speed, or a Boobie's fabulous blue feet. We may be slow and naked, and not, really, very pretty, but we don't just have brains that think, we have brains capable of thinking about our brains.

Way cool...no?

Brains are kind of au courant and I have a stack of books and science journals on the subject. I've got Blink (I know...you loved it or you hated it...you thought it was sloppy and fabricated or you thought it was precise and insightful); I've got Your Brain on Music; I've got The Female Brain (yes, Virgil, there IS a reason why we talk so much); I've got The Head Trip, which despite its stoner title, is a relatively heavy work on various states of consciousness and brain activity. I've watched neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's moving TED talk*; and I've got the "Discover" article on "How Do Our Brains Work?". I'm up to my ears in brains.

It's quite the fascinating frontier, this brain thing, and in the last few weeks, I feel like I've been handed the keys to The Kingdom of All That's Worth Knowing. I am fairly confident that I can, now, explain everything to everyone. My own smugness completes me (but that's just my smallish amygdala talking).

Lord knows, we've been fiddling with our brains long enough. In my own time, many of my peers were even trying to crawl out of their brains with chemical assistance just to get a little vacation from the confines of having one in the first place. But now, rather than just opening those doors of perception, modern imaging techniques like position-emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are allowing neuroscientists to explain what's happening on the other side of those doors even as brain responses are occurring.

In an example given by Dr. Louann Brizendine in The Female Brain, resonance imaging recorded the brain activity of "men and women observing a neutral scene of a man and a woman having a conversation. The male brains' sexual areas immediately sparked - they saw it as a potential sexual rendezvous. The female brains did not have any activation in the sexual areas. The female brains saw the situation as just two people talking." While very simple, this scenario says worlds about how males and females interpret everyday life. Men are seeing sexual opportunity first and foremost; women are constantly scanning the landscape for connection and communication.

Brizendine continues to make a case for females and social connection by noting that in the brain centers for hearing and language, "women have 11 percent more neurons than men." Besides having a larger network for language and a heightened ability to read emotions and facial expressions, the female principal center for "both emotion and memory formation" is monster. Which is why I (and the rest of my kind) can remember and replay every detail of every argument FOREVER, and the memory stays every bit as emotionally loaded as the actual event. Blame it on my hippocampus.

Until recently, the common thinking was that the brains of men and women were essentially the same, structurally speaking. The obvious truth that boys and girls had wildly different development and behavior in infancy and early childhood was attributed to social and cultural factors. Nonsexist party-line wisdom held that if parents or teachers didn't precondition boys to play with toy fire trucks and girls to play with EasyBake Ovens, gender bias behavior would be nipped in the bud.

Furthermore, we understood that if mothers modeled career independence and fathers demonstrated more sensitivity and participated in housekeeping, girls and boys would be less likely to fall into rigid gender roles. This sounded great, except that parents couldn't help noticing that if you denied a boy a toy gun, he'd fashion one out of his sister's Barbie, point it at the cat and yell, "BANG! You're DEAD!" And if you give a girl a Tonka, she'll wrap it up in a blankie and rock it to sleep. On average, little boys will find a way to fashion the most innocuous objects into weapons of death and destruction, and girls will cuddle a rock if nothing else is available.

While no one would argue that nurture plays a significant role in how we arrive at manhood and womanhood according to the cultural Crock-Pot we are simmered in, we are just beginning to understand how our brains come already hardwired for what we eventually understand as female and male behavior.

The "female brain" is the default brain in utero until the fetus is about eight weeks of age. If the baby is male, a testosterone surge at this time will kill off surplus communication nerves and expand the centers responsible for aggression. Before any of us have even reached our third month of development and are still just the tiniest bundle of cells, biology has begun to shape our destiny.

Why women would rather move to a different city than endure a conflict with a coworker, or why men can come to blows at noon, yet be willing to share a pitcher of beer by nightfall, are topics of endless speculation. As is the question of why girls begin to shy away from math and science in middle school. Tests show over and over that females and males have the same abilities. But after the onset of puberty brings surges in estrogen and other hormonal fluctuations that flood and destabilize the brain, females devote themselves to activities with a high social component. Boys, conversely, victims of testosterone's verbal dampening, tend to withdraw to more solitary pursuits like computers and technology.

The drive for connectedness in females and dominance in males (controlled by the larger amygdala, the primitive brain area that registers fear and triggers aggression) informs all aspects of our lives. Yet, while we have the ability unique to our species to self-reflect on our behavior, we are just beginning to become aware of the powerful chemical and organic forces that steer it.

This brain knowledge is very comforting to me. I have spent an entire lifetime interacting with men and women and trying to get answers to the "why" of it all. All that pondering has not given me much insight into behaviors on either side of the gender fence. Why was my father the only person in the family allowed to choose meat from the butcher case when he was an electrician and didn't have any special knowledge or training in meats? Why do so many girls insist that they are terrified of insects when any peril posed by an insect is the same for girls as boys? Why do women pursue hopeless relationships repeatedly and elevate passive aggression to a precise art; why do men seem so detached from so many of their emotions; why am I incapable of answering a direct question?

How is it that I have the confidence to point to another woman's feet and squeal "oooo, CUTE shoes!", even though "cuteness" is so intangible that I could never begin to define its parameters when applied to footwear? Why is it that most men hesitate to date the former wife/girlfriend of a friend without the friend's blessing, but a woman has no such inhibition, knowing, innately, that all in love is fair?

Because I haven't understood the underlying biological rationale for human behavior very well, I've made judgments. I didn't, for example, have much regard for women who live entirely for male approval. I felt that their lack of self-determination reflected badly on the credibility of womankind. Brain science teaches me that baby girls possess a "near psychic capacity to read faces and tone of voice for emotions and states of mind." If a girl grows up with a man who does not give her approval from either his expression or his voice, she will conclude that something is wrong with her. She needs to see in his face and hear from his voice that he is positively connected to her. As a child, she will exhaust herself in trying to make it right with an unresponsive male. The pattern is likely to continue when she grows to womanhood and chases after the approval of father figures or unavailable men.

Somehow, knowing that we are driven biologically allows me to be more charitable toward others. Chauvinism stops being just deliberate troglodyte behavior and starts to seem more reasonable coming from an organism with a bloated amygdala. Manipulative workplace politics are just an extreme, if maddening, way women focus the powers of their super-sized hippocampuses to firm up loyalty among competing females.

What follows are a couple of my mini-experiences. Neither really affected my life since I was only an observer in the first instance, and just heard the story in the second. But both confounded me for a very long time because they demonstrated common imbalances in male/female relationships. Now that I'm becoming friends with my hippocampus, it's making more sense, but I dissected both of these stories for information for a lot of years:

Greg had a good friend named Jay. They had worked together while still in college in Missouri, and although Jay moved to California and Greg ended up in Texas, they still made an effort to travel and visit each other. Shortly after moving to Sacramento, Jay met Ellen, and Greg became friends with her as well.

About seven years later, I came along and, eventually, met Jay on his occasional trips to Austin. Greg and Jay shared the closest thing to the female definition of "friend" (people who keep up with one another, telephone, visit periodically, and enjoy shared experience) that I observed in Greg's life.

Eventually, Greg took a job in the East Bay and I finally met Ellen at dinner one night. Somewhere in the conversation, and without preamble, Jay said, "Oh, by the way...did I tell you that Ellen and I got married?" Greg looked up, said something like, "Hey, that's great, man...Congratulations!" And they both went back to eating.

Ellen and I stared at each other. The first thing I asked (and any woman reading this will know why) was, "Did you have a wedding?" Meaning, "Were there invited guests and, if so, why didn't we receive an invitation?"

She was horrified. She nodded, "Yes. We had a wedding and a big reception." I could see that she wanted to slink away under the table. Ellen had, after all, just assumed that Jay had invited Greg and that we couldn't make the trip to the west coast for the ceremony.

If you are reading this and don't see what the fuss is about, you're a man. If you are a woman, you already know that to fail to invite one of your oldest and closest friends to your wedding is simply unforgivable. No woman would ever tolerate such an oversight; there would be much drama, feelings would be so battered that any hope of recovering the friendship would be nonexistent. There would be no mercy and every other mutual friend would be pulled in to the fray. I have had female friends disown me for just forgetting dinner plans. Failing to extend a wedding invitation to even a coworker is a crime against female social behavior. But to leave out a close friend is unthinkable - maybe, even impossible.

The men remained unperturbed. Greg was certainly pleased that his friends were happy together. Jay absolutely adored his beautiful wife and was proud to be married to her. But no apology was extended by the one, and no sensitivity was demonstrated by the other. As far as either man was concerned, an overlooked wedding invitation was just a non-issue. Jay could have just as easily said, "Oh, by the way, I started rowing in the mornings." And Greg would have had about the same response, "Oh...good for you."

While I haven't read "The Male Brain" (because Brizendine hasn't written it yet), I'm going to take a swing at what was going on in Greg's head...nothing. Jay's wedding (a communications and relationship orgy for a female) has no real hook for a male brain (other than, maybe Jay's) any more than base-jumping or spear fishing does for me.

Nothing that interested Greg's brain (sex, athletic performance, competition, dominance, status, authority over and respect from other men) would have been a primary feature of the wedding. It would have been saturated with symbolic bonding and the summoning of deep emotions, and Greg would have been counting the nanoseconds until he could shed his wedding outfit and get on with some serious inebriation (a state of being he could have easily achieved at home). Being present for his friend's marriage was exactly equal to being absent. And, while Jay was happy to be at his own wedding because it meant that he could keep Ellen, having Greg there to share in his happiness was, likewise, neutral.

At the time, I interpreted Greg's unruffled feelings as a sign that he didn't care about marriage, or that men, in general, don't have much interest in each others' lives when it involves females. Now that I know I was being misled by my touchy-feely hippocampus, I can view Greg as less of a psychologically bereft male with the emotional range of a stick, and acknowledge that his brain just doesn't roll that way. If you take a survey of how many grooms actively participate in the planning of their own weddings, you are likely to find that most other male brains don't roll that way either.

In our next scenario, we have Lori, a charter member of a newly formed performance choir. As the choir became more established and invitations to perform increased, the need for formal wear arose. Men, accustomed to wearing white shirts and dark suits for engagements, found themselves needing to either rent or buy tuxedos.

The instant the decision for tuxedos was made, the female half of the choir went into overdrive. A list of clothiers, department stores, tailors and rental shops was compiled. Prices were compared, measurements were taken and offers to "go along" were extended. The sopranos and altos formed a hive of industry to ensure that every bass and tenor was paired with the perfect tuxedo at the perfect price. The men did not object, being relieved, probably, to get a reprieve from shopping.

Finally, an astute gay man in the choir said, "You know ladies, these guys are all adults. They know how to get dressed."

Lori was stunned - not by the discovery that men are capable of picking out their own pants, but by how 30 or so women (busy women with busy lives and families) never paused to consider the obvious; e.g., men can dress themselves. And, even if they are wardrobe-challenged in some way, every store has staff willing to assist them.

Crazy, but there it is, isn't it? The drive to nurture is so powerful that females will do it whether they are invited or not. Obviously, this is a very useful and necessary impulse when children are involved, but it becomes completely misguided when directed at competent adults. And it can create a smothering imbalance between men and women, particularly if the male rejects excessive "mothering."

Understanding how the brain works allows us to shape a destiny that's not entirely driven by biological imperatives. The blessing of consciousness gives us the option to tweak our impulses and trump our own brains, once we understand how they are hard-wired.

This has some very practical applications. When you, a woman, meet a guy and he tells you that his wife doesn't understand him, you may feel your over-strung empathy start to vibrate (he already knows this is a successful strategy, by the way, either by instinct or experience). Now you'll be able to detect that it's only your hippocampus kicking in. You'll know that it's not your job to kiss his troubled brow and offer yourself as the one female in all the world who understands his sense of isolation. You'll reply, "Have you considered counseling?" and move on.

Likewise, if you're a man and are accused of being remote and emotionally unavailable, you will have a strong defense by countering, "Yes, testosterone surges burned off a big chunk of my communication center when I was gestating. So, I can't really share my feelings with you since I don't know what they are or if I even have any. But if you're hungry, I've got an amygdala fierce enough to take down a rhino. You want me to go kill something for you?"

That should level the field.

References and quotes from The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine, M.D., 2006 (Morgan Road Books, New York).

*If you haven't seen this yet on-line www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229, I encourage you to take twenty minutes out and watch. I give it five craniums out of five. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who spoke at a Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference (TED talks) about her own stroke. If you are interested in consciousness, you are likely to be very moved by what Dr. Taylor has to say.

Spoiler Alert: there's a human brain in the video, but it's presented in a sensitive manner (by that I mean that it's not connected to its original owner any more and it looks like it's been washed for its close-up).

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Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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