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A concept looked at in class on Thursday was the idea of variation among brains within a species. As stated in class in accordance with Emily Dickinson’s poem concerning the brain, since people behave differently, people have different brains. This idea was explored more in class when we considered the brains of songbirds; male songbirds act differently as they are the sex that actually sings the song, while female songbirds determine if the song is worthy of a response. Based on Dickinson conclusions we have been making, we would conclude that the male birds would have different brain construction than female birds, which when we looked closer was the truth. But the question is: can these differences in brain formation be seen in humans?

While there are differences that exist between men and women, few behaviors are strictly male or strictly female. One noteable difference between men and women is that women are more associative in thought than men, but can it be stated that this difference in behavior is because of biology or because of different styles of raising boys and girls? It turns out that female brain have a larger corpus callosum, which connects the two halves of the brain, and contributes to the fact that women are more associative in nature than men.

Therefore it can be seen that the sexual dimorphic brain seen in the songbirds has been maintained as it is exhibited in humans as well. Therefore it can be assumed that all species have some degree of sexual dimorphism in brain structure.