By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
After I earned my license, I began working for Arlington Psychological Associates. Most of my clients were women, and one of the main problems they dealt with was husbands or boyfriends.
It soon became apparent that their problem was men did not understand the many differences between the sexes.
This generalization does not apply to most couples, but was a problem common to women seeking help at our psychological clinic.
One memorable example was a couple in marriage counseling.
One of her complaints was he rarely told her he loved her. His response was “I told you I loved you when we married, and if it changes I will let you know.”
To earn a PhD degree requires original research, ideally a project that will produce results. At Medical School a few students pursued a project that did not produce meaningful results, so they had to start over on another experiment.
Students are normally allowed 5 years to complete the research. Some never earn their degree because they fail to produce valid research results.
One easy quick project that most always produces good results is to compare males and women using functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (fMRI).
This technique determines the specific brain location where a certain function, such as speech or memory, occurs. Comparisons consistently document differences between the sexes.
If researching how colors are related to emotions, fMRI registers clear brain differences between males and females. The student writes up the results and is awarded her PhD.
For years, only males were tested to determine proper drug dosage. It was then learned that a much higher rate of women taking Ambien were too sleepy to drive safely in the morning.
Research found that women metabolized the drug differently than males. Consequently, women got twice the proper dose, which produced their rash of traffic accidents.
A major reason for the difference is due to male and female hormone differences. Another example is women have lower levels of alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that breaks down ethanol.
Thus alcohol has a stronger, earlier effect in women than men. Now all new drugs must be evaluated on both sexes to determine the proper dosage.
Except for enucleated cells, every healthy normal human body cell, ignoring aneuploidy, is either male (XY) or female (XX).
Given 50 trillion cells in the healthy human body, and 46 chromosomes, the average human has 2,300,000,000,000,000 chromosomal differences compared to the opposite sex.
Furthermore, the male Y chromosome contains 55 genes, and the X chromosome as many as 1,400 genes, or over 25 times as many genes.
These 1,400 genes produce many of the major genetic differences between the sexes.
After a fertilized egg (zygote) is formed, thousands of other genetic differences are created by imprinting. Imprinting is where certain genes are switched off in males and other genes are switched off in females.
Research on 118 fetuses, between 26 and 40 weeks old found significant differences between males and females in 7 of 16 functional connectivity networks.
These observations confirm the fact that sexual dimorphism emerges very early during human gestation.
A recent study of 1,065 brains found differences between male and female brains were so profound that scientists successfully predicted a dissected brain belonged to a man or woman with 93 percent accuracy.
Another evaluation of 949 brain scans found a stark difference in the architecture of the brain that documents why men excel at certain tasks and women at others.
Men are better at learning and performing a single task (cycling or navigating); women were better at multi-tasking. Men are better on spatial processing and sensory motor speed.
Women are better than men on tasks related to attention, word, and facial memory. This research is evidence that male and female brains complement each other in life, work, and raising children.
Other research determined that women’s pupils are nine percent larger than men’s, which gives rise to the saying that mothers and female teachers have “eyes in the back of their heads.”
Men have fewer rod visual cells and women have better color perception. One out of 12 men are color blind, compared to only 1 in every 200 women.
Men have greater sensitivity for fine detail and rapidly moving objects due to their 25 percent higher androgen receptors than females.
Women have much better high-frequency hearing and listen by using both sides of their brain, whereas men are more likely to listen with only one side.
Women have a better sense of smell because female brains have 50 percent more olfactory neurons. Women also have a better sense of taste due to more neurons in their brain taste center.
One of the results due to genetic difference is that females tend to choose careers that produce more personal rewards, even if the pay is less.
Males choose better-paying careers over those they prefer because income is often for them a major career consideration.
Women as a whole make better neurosurgeons due to their superior fine-muscle coordination. Men make better diesel mechanics due to their superior gross-muscle coordination.
Women lean toward careers focusing on people, such as teaching and healthcare. Males tend to work with things, and are oriented to the engineering, manufacturing, and agricultural professions.
Conversely, some women make better diesel mechanics than most men. Some men, like Dr. Ben Carson, make better neurosurgeons than most women.
In spite of spending millions to motivate women to earn degrees in welding and men in early child care, these efforts have failed.
Studies have consistently found that differences in how men and women organize their verbal and visual-spatial abilities exist in every society.
Males and females display major biological differences from zygote to death. This confirms the Biblical teaching that God created human males and females for different, but compatible, roles.
Marriage success required males and females to understand and accommodate for these differences.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries.