Six to Twelve, Mylenated Neurons, Boys and Girls

During the ages 6 – 12, one of the neural developments that takes place is an increasing integration of the brain as a whole through mylinated neurons (white matter).  Though boys and girls tend to have the same number of neurons overall, boys will have more white matter in the end. Though there are many other neural developments taking place, this little point has some interesting ramifications.  It seems that what the white matter does is it allows for a more rapid communication of more distant segments of the brain. It also allows for a greater compartmentalizing of neural segments. Arguably, this results in the reason why boys tend to have more compartmentalized regions of the brain.  I think it also helps to explain why more boys manifest abstractive tendencies and girls manifest more concrete tendencies.  By abstractive, I mean that they will give extended attention to particular areas of the senses or thought, while filtering out all kinds of other sensations and thoughts.  By concrete, I mean that activated motor sensory experiences will tend to break into consciousness even when not focused upon these at the moment.  On the negative side, this helps to explain the common experience among parents and teachers of boys not being focused “on the moment” and girls not being interested as much in theoretical or abstract math and science (though they can be more interested in concrete math and experimental science). 

There are many ramifications to this differentiation, and to be honest, this is a field that needs to be studied more so that we can help boys and girls to more fully flourish in atriums and classrooms, and at home.   If true, boys should be given more disparate types of experiences that in fact are connected, but which the boys then have to find.  Girls should be given vast arrays of materials and activities that have immediately patterned connections.  There will be overlap here of course, and there are plenty of studies that show some boys brains tend more toward concrete structures and some girls tend more to the abstractive tendencies (this has not been studied regarding sexual preferences as far as I know).

Even without the neural science, we can begin again to trust in our common sense about how boys operate and how girls operate.  Neural science is revealing differentiations between male and female brain structures that should change our views of traditional and culturally based gender differentiations. Many of these differentiations are not mere social constructs, but have roots that spring from gender differentiated neural structures. These must not be ignored if we want to help children flourish. 

Though I wish he had developed this more through his attentiveness to interiority, Saint Augustine made an interesting distinction between higher and lower reason. Both men and women he argues in De Trinitate have higher reason and are in the image of God.  They both can contemplate higher things and mediated upon spiritual realities.  But they also have lower reason, which is tied he argues to the material gender of the bodies.  This lower reason is the use of the mind in relationship to the body, and thus it differentiates because male and female bodies and procreative systems are different.  This would be an interesting line of exploration. I think we are at a time in history which would allow us to vastly expand upon the differentiations of male and female, especially in how boys develop into men and girls into women.

Just some thoughts.