Sex/Gender in the Brain
Event details
| Date | 29.04.2022 |
| Hour | 11:00 › 12:00 |
| Speaker |
Prof. Dr. Anelis KaiserTrujillo Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
In-person: SV 1717
Zoom: go.epfl.ch/Kaiser
Seminar Abstract
In 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 activation concentrated in Brodmann area (BA) 44 was detected while in men activation was more frontal in BA 45 and bilateral. This effect was only significant at the level of group analysis; it disappears when analyzing activation at the level of the individual subject. When a different threshold was applied, this result also changed, it became a "no sex/effect". Others showed that, when holding the experimental task constant, different region-of-interest-analyses revealed sex/gender differences while other approaches did not, indicating a dependence on methodology. I also started realizing how all sex/gender differences made it into the titles and abstracts of the papers but the "no differences" only rarely did. These and other paradigmatic, methodological and statistical aspects that interfere with assessing the presence or absence of sex/gender differences in the brain led me to scrutinize the way in which the sex/gender variable is understood, operationalized, measured and interpreted in human cognitive neuroscience.
Apart from showing own results of my current work in neurolinguistics in this input, I will contextualize the search for sex/gender differences in neurolinguistics and in cognitive neuroscience in general. I will 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 differences versus gender differences, and by scrutinizing the fixation on differences 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 importance that intersectionality, critical race studies, equality and diversity could have for a rapidly developing big data-driven but nevertheless responsible neuroscience.
Bionote
Anelis Kaiser Trujillo, Ph.D., is professor of Gender Studies in STEM at University of Freiburg, Germany. She received her Ph.D. in psychology in 2008 from the University of Basel, Switzerland. In her doctoral work, she examined sex/gender in the brain as it relates to exploring the existence of paradigmatic, methodological, and statistical defaults that interfere with assessing the presence or absence of sex/gender differences. Her areas of interest include empirical neurofeminism, feminist science and technology studies, neurolinguistics, the classification and registration of sex/gender in science and technology, fMRI and justice movements. In the last years, her research has focused on feminist methods and statistical approaches of experimentation in human neuroscience in order provide a gender-theory informed but data-driven contribution from within the neuroscientific labs. Anelis Kaiser Trujillo is a co-founder of the international research network NeuroGenderings.
Zoom: go.epfl.ch/Kaiser
Seminar Abstract
In 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 activation concentrated in Brodmann area (BA) 44 was detected while in men activation was more frontal in BA 45 and bilateral. This effect was only significant at the level of group analysis; it disappears when analyzing activation at the level of the individual subject. When a different threshold was applied, this result also changed, it became a "no sex/effect". Others showed that, when holding the experimental task constant, different region-of-interest-analyses revealed sex/gender differences while other approaches did not, indicating a dependence on methodology. I also started realizing how all sex/gender differences made it into the titles and abstracts of the papers but the "no differences" only rarely did. These and other paradigmatic, methodological and statistical aspects that interfere with assessing the presence or absence of sex/gender differences in the brain led me to scrutinize the way in which the sex/gender variable is understood, operationalized, measured and interpreted in human cognitive neuroscience.
Apart from showing own results of my current work in neurolinguistics in this input, I will contextualize the search for sex/gender differences in neurolinguistics and in cognitive neuroscience in general. I will 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 differences versus gender differences, and by scrutinizing the fixation on differences 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 importance that intersectionality, critical race studies, equality and diversity could have for a rapidly developing big data-driven but nevertheless responsible neuroscience.
Bionote
Anelis Kaiser Trujillo, Ph.D., is professor of Gender Studies in STEM at University of Freiburg, Germany. She received her Ph.D. in psychology in 2008 from the University of Basel, Switzerland. In her doctoral work, she examined sex/gender in the brain as it relates to exploring the existence of paradigmatic, methodological, and statistical defaults that interfere with assessing the presence or absence of sex/gender differences. Her areas of interest include empirical neurofeminism, feminist science and technology studies, neurolinguistics, the classification and registration of sex/gender in science and technology, fMRI and justice movements. In the last years, her research has focused on feminist methods and statistical approaches of experimentation in human neuroscience in order provide a gender-theory informed but data-driven contribution from within the neuroscientific labs. Anelis Kaiser Trujillo is a co-founder of the international research network NeuroGenderings.
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free