Science is losing out because of the mistaken belief that “men are from Mars and women from Venus,” a leading neuroscientist has claimed.

Professor Gina Rippon said it was time to debunk the myth that gender differences are hard-wired into our brains.

In reality, there was no significant difference between the brains of a girl and boy in terms of their structure and function, she stressed.

But experiences and even attitudes could change the “plastic” brain on a physical level, causing its wiring to alter. It was this that led girls and boys from an early age to head in different directions, said Rippon from Aston University.

While girls tended to gravitate towards fields of communication, people skills and the arts, boys were more likely to become scientists and engineers.

Even when girls went into science, they mostly chose careers at the “softer” end of the subject, such as biology, psychology and sociology, rather than physics and maths.

“The brain is much more affected by stereotypes and attitudes in the environment, and that doesn’t just change behavior, it changes the brain,” she said. Last year, 5,000 boys in the United Kingdom completed Level 3 engineering apprenticeships, but only 40 girls did the same, Rippon pointed out.

But Rippon insisted this was nothing to do with innate differences in the way the brains of girls and boys worked.

Rather, it was likely to be the result of their brains being altered by experience.

One of the most often quoted examples of gender difference is spatial ability — the ability to understand the relationships between different objects in space.

Boys are said to be naturally more spatially gifted. But if girls aged 6 to 8 are given the tile-matching puzzle game Tetris, their brain wiring changes and their spatial ability improves.

“男人来自火星，女人来自金星”的迷信打败科学

一位顶级神经学家声称，由于被“男人来自火星，女人来自金星”的信仰误导，科学正蒙受损失。

吉娜·里彭教授说，是时候揭穿性别差异在我们大脑里根深蒂固的神话了。

她强调，事实上从大脑的结构和功能上看，男生和女生并无明显差别。

但经历甚至态度能在物理形态上改变“可塑性强的”大脑，引起结构变化。

这就是导致男女生从早期开始向不同方向发展的因素，来自英国阿斯顿大学的里彭教授说。

女孩倾向于学习交流、人际关系技巧和艺术，男孩更倾向于成为科学家和工程师。

即便女生进入科学领域，她们更多选择类似生物、心理学和社会学这样“较浅显”的学科，而非数学或物理。

“大脑更容易被环境中的固有陈规和态度影响，它们不仅改变行为，而且改变大脑本身。”

里彭教授指出，去年完成了英国3级工程师学习计划的男生多达5000名，女生只有40名。

但里彭教授坚称这与男女先天的大脑工作机制差异并无关系。相反，它更像是大脑被经历所改变的结果。

一个屡见不鲜的例子是不同性别空间能力的差异，空间能力是理解不同物体空间关系的能力。

据说男生天生就空间能力强。

但如果女生在6岁时开始接触俄罗斯方块这样的拼图游戏，她们的大脑架构将改变，空间能力也会提高。

   Words to Learn 相关词汇 

    【揭穿】

    jiēchuān

    debunk

    expose something as being pretentious, false or exaggerated

    【天生的】

    tiānshēng de

    hard-wired

    automatic or innate