Men and women show differences in behavior because their brains are physically distinct organs, new research suggests. Male and female brains appear to be constructed from markedly different genetic blueprints.
最新研究表明,男女行为上表现出来的差异是因为他们的大脑 分属两种显著不同的器官。男性与女性大脑看来似乎建构于明显不 同的基因蓝图。
The differences in the circuitry that wires them up and the chemicals that transmit messages inside them are so great as to point to the conclusion that there is not just one kind of human brain, but two, according to recent neurological studies.
根据近期的神经学研究，连接在他们大脑里的线路和大脑内部 传输信息的化学物质差异巨大，从而使人们得出结论:并非只有一种人类大脑，而是有两种。
Men may be from Mars and women may be from Venus, and since the American psychotherapist John Gray wrote his famous book, in 1992, on the idea, it has been a commonplace to think of men and women as being from different planets in terms of their emotional responses.
男人可能来自于火星，而女人则可能来自于金星。自从1992年 美国心理治疗专家约翰?格雷在他所写的大名鼎鼎的著作中阐述 了这一观点之后，在观念上来说，认为男性和女性来自于不同的行 星便已成为老生常谈之事。
But until recently, these differences were often explained by the action of adult sex hormones, or by social pressures that encouraged males and females to behave in a certain way.
直到最近,这些不同还经常被解释为是由于成年人性激素的作 用或是社会压力促使男性和女性按照某种既有的模式行事。
Increasingly, however, these assumptions are being challenged，according to a review of recent neurological research appearing in recent New Scientist magazine, and it is becoming clear that the brains of men and women show numerous anatomical differences.
然而根据《新科学家》杂志上刊登的一篇有关近期神经学研究 回顾的文章，这些假设正逐渐受到挑战。事实愈发清楚地表明男女 大脑存在着诸多解剖学上的差异。
Some of these divergences, the review by Hannah Hoag suggests，could explain a number of mysteries, such as why men and women are prone to different mental health problems, why some drugs work well for one sex but have little effect on the other, and why chronic pain tends to affect women more than men.
汉纳?霍格在这篇文章中指出，这些差异中的一部分可用来解 释大量谜团。例如，男性和女性为何倾向于产生不同的心理健康问 题，为何某些药品对一种性别效果不错，而对另外一种性别却是收 效甚微，为何慢性疼痛对女性的影响往往会多于男性。
Although it has long been known that there were some male-female differences, it was thought they were confined to the hypothalamus, the brain region involved in regulating food intake, fighting and the sex drive, among other things. But it is becoming clear that the relative sizes of many of the structures inside female brains are different from those of males.
尽管男女有别早为人知,但此种认识只被局限于下丘脑——即专门用于调节食物摄取.争斗和性冲动的大脑区域。人们越来越清楚地认识到女性大脑中许多构 造的相对尺寸与男性的有所不同。
One study, by scientists at Harvard Medical School, found that parts of the frontal lobe, which houses decision-making and problem-solving functions, were proportionally larger in women, as was the limbic cortex, which regulates emotions. Other studies have found that the hippocampus, involved in short-term memory and spatial navigation, is also proportionally larger in women than in men, “perhaps surprisingly, given women’s reputation as bad map readers,” says the New Scientist review.
哈佛大学医学院的科学家们在其所进行的一项研究中发现，女性大脑前额叶中具有决策和解 决问题功能的那些部分从比例上说要比男性大，调节情感的边缘皮层也是如此。其他研究还发现， 女性大脑中参与短时记忆和空间导向的海马区也要比男性的大些。《新科学家》杂志中有一篇文章 写逋“这或许令人惊讶，因为女性被称作糟糕的地图识别者”。
Proportionally larger brain areas in men include the parietal cortex, which processes signals from the sensory organs and is involved in space perception, and the amygdala, which controls emotions and social and sexual behavior. “The mere fact that a structure is different in size suggests a difference in functional organization, says Dr Larry Cahill of the Centre for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, at the University of California, Irvine.
按比例来说，男性比女性大的大脑结构包括顶叶皮质(负责处理来自感知器官的信号并参与 空间感知)和杏仁核(用于控制情感以及社会行为和性行为)。加州大学欧文分校学习与记忆神经生 物学中心的拉里.卡西尔博士说，“同一结构在男女身上却大小不一，表明其功能不同。”
One area of research concerns the brain’s pain suppressing mechanisms, and points to the fact that they may be organized differently in men and women. This would explain why women can suffer longterm pain more, and why there can be sex differences in response to opium-derived painkilling drugs. The study notes: “Women get more relief from the opioid painkiller nalbuphine compared to men, whereas in men morphine is more effective and nalbuphine actually increases the pain intensity.”
其中的一个研究领域涉及到大脑的镇痛机制。这一研究指出如下事实，即男性和女性的镇痛 机制组织不同。这些应该能解释女性更能承受长时间疼痛的原因，以及为什么会有对鸦片类镇痛 药物反应的性别差异。研究显示：“和男性比起来，女性可以从鸦片类镇痛药纳布啡中得到更多的 缓解，但是对男性来说’吗啡对镇痛更有效,而纳布啡却加重了疼痛。”
One of the reasons why physiological differences between male and female brains have not been widely noted before may be that most of what we know about the brain comes from studies of male animals and male human volunteers.
之所以以前人们没有更多地注意到男女大脑的生理差异,其中一个原因是我们所了解的绝大 部分大脑知识都来自于对雄性动物及男性自愿者的研究。