A Networking Perspective
from Section 1 - The Underpinnings of Sex and Gender and How to Study Them
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2020
Trying to assess the way sex differences in behavior are reflected in the brain, neuroscience reports produced diverse results triggering hot discussions on whether such differences exist and/or are worth considering in further studies. This chapter summarizes recent progress in the study of sex/gender effect on the brain as viewed from the perspective of (1) anatomy, which is based on the description of various global and local morphometric features of male and female brain structures; and (2) connections, which conceptualizes the brain as a large-scale network of structures interconnected within the human connectome which subserves the transmission and integration of information at both global and local levels. It is argued that the key to understanding the behavioral differentiation of the two sexes might lie in the differences in the architecture of their networks rather than in morphometric measures of particular structures and tissues.
Anna Grabowska was born and grew up in Poland when it was a Communist country. Living in a country behind the “iron curtain” made it very difficult to have access to international scientific publications and to establish contacts with other scientific groups in the West. The Solidarity breakthrough and then the accession of Poland to the European Union opened new opportunities for her professional and personal development. In the 1980s, she obtained six months of postdoctoral training in Padua (Italy). Grabowska is Professor of Psychology at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, and Professor Emerita of Biology at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences, where she led the Psychophysiology Laboratory until 2018. In 2016 she was elected a member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1998 to 2004 she was a Professor of Psychology at Jagiellonian University, Krakow. She served on the executive committee of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (1994–1997, 2000–2003) and in 2010 she co-chaired the Mid-Year Meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Krakow. Her expertise is in understanding the neural networks underlying cognitive function in humans, hemispheric asymmetry, and sex differences. Her research focuses on brain dysfunction (including dyslexia), combining behavioral, cognitive, neuroimaging, and electrophysiological (ERP) approaches. She has three children and six grandchildren. She enjoys her hobbies: skiing, Argentine tango, and gardening.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.