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SUMMARY:Sex/Gender in the Brain
DTSTART:20220429T110000
DTEND:20220429T120000
DTSTAMP:20261002T004107Z
UID:32cc762805fa5292141a78ea3d95d8bfaeef98a017a5ebc7d2d8044e
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Dr. Anelis KaiserTrujillo\nFreiburg Institute for Advanc
 ed Studies\nIn-person: SV 1717\nZoom: go.epfl.ch/Kaiser\n\nSeminar Abstrac
 t\nIn a fMRI language production task of fluent narration in which covert 
 language production was contrasted with an auditory attentional task\, we 
 found differences between women and men. In women\, a left-lateralized act
 ivation concentrated in Brodmann area (BA) 44 was detected while in men ac
 tivation was more frontal in BA 45 and bilateral. This effect was only sig
 nificant at the level of group analysis\; it disappears when analyzing act
 ivation at the level of the individual subject. When a different threshold
  was applied\, this result also changed\, it became a "no sex/effect". Oth
 ers showed that\, when holding the experimental task constant\, different 
 region-of-interest-analyses revealed sex/gender differences while other ap
 proaches did not\, indicating a dependence on methodology. I also started 
 realizing how all sex/gender differences made it into the titles and abstr
 acts of the papers but the "no differences" only rarely did. These and oth
 er paradigmatic\, methodological and statistical aspects that interfere wi
 th assessing the presence or absence of sex/gender differences in the brai
 n led me to scrutinize the way in which the sex/gender variable is underst
 ood\, operationalized\, measured and interpreted in human cognitive neuros
 cience.\n\nApart from showing own results of my current work in neurolingu
 istics in this input\, I will contextualize the search for sex/gender diff
 erences in neurolinguistics and in cognitive neuroscience in general. I wi
 ll discuss the search for differences in functional activation between “
 the female” and “the male” group by asking\, for instance\, what “
 the female” and “the male” is for the brain\, by comparing sex diffe
 rences versus gender differences\, and by scrutinizing the fixation on dif
 ferences instead of similarities in comparative gender identity research. 
 By these means\, I will reflect upon the meaning of a “sex/gender in the
  brain” and the role of neurofeminism for the public and for society. I 
 will touch on bioethical questions in brain imaging and speak about the im
 portance that intersectionality\, critical race studies\, equality and div
 ersity could have for a rapidly developing big data-driven but nevertheles
 s responsible neuroscience.\n\n\nBionote\nAnelis Kaiser Trujillo\, Ph.D.\,
  is professor of Gender Studies in STEM at University of Freiburg\, German
 y. She received her Ph.D. in psychology in 2008 from the University of Bas
 el\, Switzerland. In her doctoral work\, she examined sex/gender in the br
 ain as it relates to exploring the existence of paradigmatic\, methodologi
 cal\, and statistical defaults that interfere with assessing the presence 
 or absence of sex/gender differences. Her areas of interest include empiri
 cal neurofeminism\, feminist science and technology studies\, neurolinguis
 tics\, the classification and registration of sex/gender in science and te
 chnology\, fMRI and justice movements. In the last years\, her research h
 as focused on feminist methods and statistical approaches of experimentati
 on in human neuroscience in order provide a gender-theory informed but dat
 a-driven contribution from within the neuroscientific labs. Anelis Kaiser 
 Trujillo is a co-founder of the international research network NeuroGender
 ings.
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717 https://epfl.zoom.u
 s/j/68819748741
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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