Pop neuroscience has long been fascinated with uncovering secret biological differences between male and female brains. The question of whether men and women have innately different brains rarely fails to get people riled up.
大众神经学一直热衷于研究尚未被发现的男女大脑之间的生理差异。两性大脑是否存在先天性差异始终是人们关注的话题。
Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School and the author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain, says that anyone who goes searching for innate differences between the sexes won't find them.
芝加哥医学院神经科学教授、《粉色大脑，蓝色大脑》的作者莱斯·艾略特（Lise Eliot）认为，任何试图探寻两性先天差异的人都将徒劳无功。
"There is absolutely no difference between male and female brains."
“男女大脑绝对没有差异。”
That's a bold statement, and one science is divided on.
这是她的一个大胆论断，但神经学领域对此有分歧。
A large study in the UK found that many regions of men's brains were larger than women's, and that women on average had thicker cerebral cortices.
英国的一项大型研究发现，男性大脑的许多区域比女性大，但女性普遍拥有较厚的大脑皮层。
What does that mean for how the brain works? Unclear.
这样的结果意味着男女大脑的运作方式有什么不同吗？我们不得而知。
Another study found that "averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist, but an individual brain is likely to be just that: individual, with a mix of features", as New Scientist reported in 2015.
《新科学家》杂志在2015年的一篇报道中提到，还有一项研究发现，在一般情况下，不同性别的大脑构造确实存在差异，但每个个体的大脑本身就存在各种各样的特点。
But there's no doubt that whatever their brains look like, behavior and school performance differences between men and women are strongly shaped by socialization.
毫无疑问，不管大脑什么样，男女行为和成绩的差异很大程度上是受到社会环境的影响。
Eliot blames academia and the media in part for the cycle that leads to the ongoing argument over biological brain differences.
艾略特认为，关于大脑生理差异之所以存在持续性争论，部分原因在于学术界和媒体的宣传。
Desperate for funding and attention, academics often focus studies on gender disparities, because most scholars know that any small statistical difference between men and women will make headlines.
学者们迫切需要研究资金和关注度，因此他们往往把研究重点放在性别差异上。 因为他们大多数都知道，任何男女之间在统计学上的微小差异都能吸引关注度。
She believes that even scientifically indisputable differences, such as the oft-cited statistic that male brains are 10 percent bigger than female brains, don't mean anything.
她还认为，即便是科学上论证成立的差异也并没有什么意义，例如经常被引用的“男性大脑比女性大脑大10%”。
All of men's organs are bigger on average, but that doesn't mean they function differently.
一般而言，男性的所有器官都比女性大一些，但这并不意味着器官功能有何差异。
If scientists and academics were to begin with the premise that men and women are equally capable, Eliot said, their studies would result in radically different conclusions.
艾略特认为，如果科学家和学者们研究时设置一个前提，就是男女能力相当，那么他们将得出大不相同的结论。
For instance, many, including the former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, have used a 1970 study that showed men outperformed women 13 to one on the math portion of the SAT to explain why there aren't more women at the top of STEM fields.
例如，包括前哈佛大学校长劳伦斯·萨默斯（Lawrence Summers）在内的很多专家，都曾引用1970年的一项研究来解释在STEM领域（科学，技术，工程和数学）的顶层，并没有太多女性的现象。这项研究显示，在SAT考试数学板块里取得高分的考生中，男性和女性比例为13:1。
"People said brilliance in math is a male phenomenon," Eliot said.
艾略特说：“人们以为卓越的数学能力是一种男性现象。”
Of course, it turned out women were being discouraged from pursuing STEM.
然而，实际情况是女性不被鼓励去钻研STEM领域的学科。
Once more programs were put in place to foster this type of learning, the ratio dropped to three to one and is now on its way to closing.
一旦有更多的机会来培养女孩学习这类学科，高分获得者的性别比率就降到了3:1，而且现在差距还在不断缩小。
"We live in a gender-binary world. The default assumption is that these differences are hard-wired... But male and female brains are not much [more] different from each other than male or female hearts or kidneys."
“我们生活在一个性别二元的世界。默认的假设是男女差异根深蒂固，但是，男女之间大脑的差别，并不比男女之间的心脏或肾脏的差别更大。”
编辑：张曦
实习生：林语琴
来源：《大西洋月刊》
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