Major new study from Cambridge University just out: male and female brains are different.PC feminists won't like it

(Cambridge)(h/t CHSummers) New study examines thousands of brains from two decades of research to reveal differences between male and female brain structure.

For the first time we can look across the vast literature and confirm that brain size and structure are different in males and females

Amber Ruigrok

Reviewing over 20 years of neuroscience research into sex differences in brain structure, a Cambridge University team has conducted the first meta-analysis of the evidence, published this week in the prestigious journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 

The team, led by doctoral candidate Amber Ruigrok and Professors John Suckling and Simon Baron-Cohen in the Department of Psychiatry, performed a quantitative review of the brain imaging literature testing overall sex differences in total and regional brain volumes. They searched all articles published between 1990 and 2013. A total of 126 articles were included in the study, covering brains from individuals as young as birth to 80 years old.

They found that males on average have larger total brain volumes than women (by 8-13%). On average, males had larger absolute volumes than females in the intracranial space (12%; >14,000 brains), total brain (11%; 2,523 brains), cerebrum (10%; 1,851 brains), grey matter (9%; 7,934 brains), white matter (13%; 7,515 brains), regions filled with cerebrospinal fluid (11.5%; 4,484 brains), and cerebellum (9%; 1,842 brains). Looking more closely, differences in volume between the sexes were located in several regions. These included parts of the limbic system, and the language system.

Specifically, males on average had larger volumes and higher tissue densities in the left amygdala, hippocampus, insular cortex, putamen; higher densities in the right VI lobe of the cerebellum and in the left claustrum; and larger volumes in the bilateral anterior parahippocampal gyri, posterior cingulate gyri, precuneus, temporal poles, and cerebellum, areas in the left posterior and anterior cingulate gyri, and in the right amygdala, hippocampus, and putamen.

By contrast, females on average had higher density in the left frontal pole, and larger volumes in the right frontal pole, inferior and middle frontal gyri, pars triangularis, planum temporale/parietal operculum, anterior cingulate gyrus, insular cortex, and Heschl’s gyrus; bilateral thalami and precuneus; the left parahippocampal gyrus, and lateral occipital cortex.

The results highlight an asymmetric effect of sex on the developing brain. Amber Ruigrok, who carried out the study as part of her PhD, said: “For the first time we can look across the vast literature and confirm that brain size and structure are different in males and females. We should no longer ignore sex in neuroscience research, especially when investigating psychiatric conditions that are more prevalent in either males or females.”

Professor Suckling added: “The sex differences in the limbic system include areas often implicated in psychiatric conditions with biased sex ratios such as autism, schizophrenia, and depression. This new study may therefore help us understand not just typical sex differences but also sex-linked psychiatric conditions. It is important to note that we only investigated sex differences in brain structure, so we cannot infer anything about how this relates to behaviour or brain function. Integrating across different levels will be an important goal for future research.”

Professor Baron-Cohen commented: “Although these very clear sex differences in brain structure may reflect an environmental or social factor, from other studies we know that biological influences are also important, including prenatal sex steroid hormones (such as foetal testosterone) as well as sex chromosome effects. Such influences need to be teased out, one by one.”

Dr Meng-Chuan Lai, another member of the team, noted: “The advantage of conducting a meta-analysis is that we can summarise the best knowledge from a vast, heterogeneous literature, with a very large sample size. However, we found a bias in the existing literature towards the use of volunteers over 18 years old, probably because this is the easiest age group to recruit and to brain scan. We need more research exploring brain development over the entire lifespan, especially in the early, formative years”.

This study was supported by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Autism Research Trust, the Dr Hendrik Müller Vaderlandsch Fonds, the Carolus Magnus Fonds under the Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds, and the Waterloo Foundation. It was conducted in association with the NIHR CLAHRC for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

- See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/males-and-females-differ-in-specific-brain-structures#sthash.0Gn3QE4N.dpuf)

U.S. Cancels Drone Sales to Turkey Over Intel Disclosure to Iran

The United States has reportedly cancelled the delivery of 10 unmanned Predator drones to Turkey following Ankara’s disclosure of several Israeli intelligence officials operating in Iran, according to Turkish press reports.

In February 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that Turkey's state-owned bank, Halkbank, was processing "payments from third parties for Iranian goods." This included "payments for Indian refiners unable to pay Tehran for imported oil through their own banking system for fear of retribution from Washington." Separately, the Journal also reported that the Turkish bank was responsible for many of Turkey's "gas-for-gold" transactions with Iran despite an executive order issued by the Obama administration prohibiting gold payments to the government of Iran. As Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan frankly admitted, Turkey's "gold exports [to Iran] end up like payments for our natural gas purchases."

The cancellation of these drones would be another setback for U.S.-Turkey relations, which have cooled in recent months as Ankara grows closer to Hamas and the Iranian regime.

Relations between Turkey and the West hit another speed bump last week when it came to light that Ankara had exposed the identities of up to 10 Iranians working on behalf of the Israelis in 2012.

“This news is particularly concerning in light of Turkey’s ongoing gold exports to Iran and support for the terrorist organization Hamas,” said Roskam, who asked Secretary of State John Kerry in April to sanction a Turkish bank that has reportedly traded gold to Iran in exchange for oil.

Turkey announced late last month that it had awarded a $3.4 billion defense contract to a Chinese firm that has been sanctioned by the United States. The China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp. (CPMIEC) was selected by Turkish officials to construct an advanced “long-range air and missile defense system,” according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News. Turkey selected CPMIEC over competing bids from U.S. defense firms Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, as well as offers from several Russian and French firms, according to the report. CPMIEC has been sanctioned by the United States for allegedly selling advanced weapons to Iran and Pakistan. It also is believed to have sold chemical weapons to Syria. Terrorism experts said that Turkey is close to qualifying as an official state sponsor of terror.
Washington, which is providing technical and intelligence to Ankara in its fight against autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels, deployed our Predator drones from Iraq to Turkey.

Over a Dozen CIA Agents Caught in Iran, Fear Execution in Middle East

In yet another disaster of  American foreign policy, more than a dozen American CIA agents working in Iran have been captured and face execution (if they haven't been tortured and killed by the devout Islamic government already).
How long will it be before the executions show up on youTube?
The media continues to carry water for the most disastrous President in American history. To call it a "setback" is intentionally misleading and attempt to minimize the damage.
I pray for these American heroes and their families.

Exclusive: CIA Spies Caught, Fear Execution in Middle East
In a significant failure for the United States in the Mideast, more than a dozen spies working for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught and the U.S. government fears they will be or have been executed, according to four current and former U.S. officials with connections to the intelligence community.
The spies were paid informants recruited by the CIA for two distinct espionage rings targeting Iran and the Beirut-based Hezbollah organization, considered by the U.S. to be a terror group backed by Iran.
"Espionage is a risky business," a U.S. official briefed on the developments told ABC News, confirming the loss of the unspecified number of spies over the last six months.
"Many risks lead to wins, but some result in occasional setbacks," the official said.
But others inside the American intelligence community say sloppy "tradecraft" -- the method of covert operations -- by the CIA is also to blame for the disruption of the vital spy networks.
CIA Spies Caught in Iran
At about the same time that Hezbollah was identifying the CIA network in Lebanon, Iranian intelligence agents discovered a secret internet communication method used by CIA-paid assets in Iran.
The CIA has yet to determine precisely how many of its assets were compromised in Iran, but the number could be in the dozens, according to one current and one former U.S. intelligence official.

via atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com

The Guardian’s “Respected American Academic”: Noam Chomsky

“The respected (?????) American academic Noam Chomsky has written to the Guardian to condemn government plans to deport the Palestinian activist Sheikh Raed Salah.”

Chomsky’s record is famously rich, but one of his more egregious actions was his decision to spend a week visiting Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006, which included a meeting with Hassan Nasrallah who, weeks later, rained over 4,000 rockets down on northern Israel, killing dozens of civilians. During the visit, Hizbullah’s ‘Al Manar’ TV station quoted Chomsky as saying:

“Hizbullah’s insistence on keeping its arms is justified… I think Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and [a] persuasive argument that they [the arms] should be in the hands of Hizbullah as a deterrent to potential aggression, and there is plenty of background reasons for that. So until, I think his position [is] reporting it correctly and it seems to me [a] reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region, [and] the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated, there has to be a deterrent, and the Lebanese army can’t be a deterrent.” h/t cifwatch.com

...and the Leftists I meet keep telling me that Chomsky is too old to take seriously and irrelevant.
image via Noam Chomsky on Venezuela @guardian.co.uk

"When human rights came, they saw our jails, they left, and they
said: Jails are good. Civilized, in accordance with democratic, because
the logic is Islamic logic." -Ayatollah Khomeini (Qom, August 19, 1979) note this was found in a place that has quotes that contradict in many issues. 

"Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric. Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed." This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?" Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape.""  Islam really is the Religion of Piece (of Ass)! One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: "What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?" Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women - ed.] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi'a Muslim."" 

"Asked if a confession obtained "by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure" was "valid and considered credible according to Islam," Mesbah-Yazdi replied: "Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih ("Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists", or the regime of Iran's mullahs) is permissible under any condition." The ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances. "Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?" was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric. Mesbah-Yazdi answered: "The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it's acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed." This reply, and reports of the rape of teen male prisoners in Iranian jails, may have prompted the following question: "Is the rape of men and young boys considered sodomy?" Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi: "No, because it is not consensual. Of course, if the prisoner is aroused and enjoys the rape, then caution must be taken not to repeat the rape.""

...it is almost like the Iranians were Liberals. it's only marriage after all.

"In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband." "I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said. Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?" "Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. "I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her." "

...Ahmadinejad's Spiritual Advisor says, "Raping Prisoners Is OK But Wash Your Hands First".

Liberals are arrogant! : Gene Expression

This new article by psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa concludes that more intelligent people are more likely to be politically liberal [HT: Ronald Bailey]. It has gotten a great deal of media attention, for example from CNN and Time. In reality, the article doesn’t actually prove any such thing. It has several significant methodological flaws. via volokh.com

The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) value on sexual exclusivity.

via spq.sagepub.com

What's got people talking is the correlation between atheism and intelligence, although that isn't what the paper is actually about. It's already pretty well established that atheists tend, on average, to be more intelligent. This paper firms that finding up a bit more, but makes a bigger claim than that.

via scienceblogs.com

it isn't intelligent to do a post on intelligence and tie it to an assumption of bias.

I would not of survived my life if I had not been a liberal. If anything the animalistic element that attempts to survive and does not articulate it’s goals or desires is likely to be liberal. Conservatism or self interest only comes out in educated forums that protect us from the pitch fork mob... that is unless you speak of other forums that merely focus on ritual and tradition which in essence runs contrary to self interest again.

Volkh Conspiracy answered the question "intelligently"

I suspect that much of the public interest in Kanazawa’s study is driven by a perception that political views endorsed by more intelligent people are more likely to be true. This, however, is a dubious inference. Even intelligent people have incentives to be rationally ignorant about politics and to do a poor job of evaluating the information they do know. I do think that, other things equal, a political view is more likely to be correct if it is more likely to be endorsed by people with greater knowledge of the issue (controlling for other factors that may affect their answers). While knowledge and intelligence are likely to be correlated, they are not the same thing. Ultimately, the fact that a political ideology is more likely to be endorsed by more intelligent people is only a weak indicator of its validity.

decades of research show that large percentages of the population have a poor understanding of political ideology and have a poor grasp of the meaning of terms like “liberal” and “conservative”

Kanazawa uses a highly idisoyncratic definition of liberalism: “genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others.” This definition doesn’t distinguish liberalism from conservatism or libertarianism. It distinguishes universalism from particularism. For example, a libertarian who believes that free market policies best promote the welfare of “genetically unrelated others” and contributes a great deal of his money to charities promoting libertarian causes counts as a liberal under this definition. The same goes for a Religious Right conservative who believes that everyone will be better off under socially conservative policies and contributes lots of money to church charities. In fact, recent research by Arthur Brooks shows that conservatives and other opponents of government redistribution give more, on average, to charity than other members of the population.

When Kanazawa actually correlates measures of intelligence with views of particular issues, he finds that, controlling for various other variables, more intelligent General Social Survey (GSS) respondents are less likely to support government-mandated efforts to ” reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes.” This is hardly consistent with claims that the more intelligent are more politically liberal in the conventional sense of the term.

via volokh.com

High IQ = Liberal, Atheist, Monogamous

James Joyner | Sunday, February 28, 2010

Yet another academic study finds correlation between IQ and political and religious beliefs. This one throws in sexual practice, too.

Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans’ evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them. “The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward,” said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. “It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people — people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower — are likely to be the ones to do that.” Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with “unconventional” philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be “ways to communicate to everyone that you’re pretty smart,” he said.

The study looked at a large sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health [Add Health], which began with adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. The participants were interviewed as 18- to 28-year-olds from 2001 to 2002. The study also looked at the General Social Survey, another cross-national data collection source.

[...]

Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism “allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion,” Bailey said. “Historically, anything that’s new and different can be seen as a threat in terms of the religious beliefs; almost all religious systems are about permanence,” he noted.

The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines “liberal” in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights. “Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with,” he said.

Without access to the study itself, it’s difficult to know what to make of it. Most obviously, if it didn’t control for education, the findings are meaningless. For a variety of reasons, education leads people to be more scientifically oriented, materialistic, skeptical, and tolerant of differences. Further, success in the educational arena is an indicator of being able to conform to social expectations — showing up on time, not disrupting others, and so forth — so it’s not surprising that there would be an uptick in the ability to maintain a monogamous relationship. And, of course, religiosity and political conservatism tend to go hand-in-hand, further confusing the relationships.

[UPDATE: A commenter at Ron Chusid's discussion of the piece points to an online PDF of the study, titled "Why Liberals and Atheists are More Intelligent." There is indeed a control for years of education. Parental education isn't factored in, except to the extent it correlates with earnings. With all the controls factored in, the author finds "adolescent intelligence has a larger effect on adult political ideology than any other

variable in the model except for religion."]

The causality issue aside, the correlation seems to remain. But let’s not get terribly excited about what all this means. The vast majority of Americans — including high IQ Americans and well educated Americans — are religious. For that matter, the vast majority of Americans — including those of below average intelligence — are in monogamous relationships or strive to be. We’re talking about small differences in aberrant behavior, not a chasm.

It’s also noteworthy that the correlation is between intelligence measured at adolescence and ideology, religiosity, and monogamy as young adults. It would be interesting to see if the correlation strengthens or fades with time. This particular cohort is being studied on through 2002; I don’t know if they’ll continue to be tracked.

Elsewhere:

• Tom Maguire makes the interesting point that the liberals who hated the very notion of IQ in the context of The Bell Curve some years back seem to love it when studies coming out showing that they’re smarter. But that’s not surprising.

• Don Sensing, who is both conservative and not only religious but a minister, notes that species don’t “move forward,” they merely adapt to changing conditions, and argues that Zanazawa’s definition of “liberal” — support for private charity to help others — is quite dubious.

• Ilya Somin argues that there are numerous methodological flaws in the study: conflating liberalism with universalism, relying on self-identification of ideology, and a seeming assumption that being endorsed by intelligent people makes an ideology “correct.” The second point is especially interesting: “For example, more African-Americans describe themselves as ‘conservative’ than ‘liberal,’ even though this description fits neither their issue positions nor their voting patterns. In recent decades, the term ‘liberal’ has acquired a negative connotation, so much so that many liberals have taken to calling themselves ‘progressives.’ This makes it likely that some liberal survey respondents won’t identify with the term, especially among the less-educated and less politically knowledgeable.”

via outsidethebeltway.com via volokh.com