Interesting new research in the role of the amygdala in gendered differences to, among other things, erotic images. Men show more amygdala activity than women when they're shown images of sex -- or even think about sex.
This in particular struck me:
Once thought to be involved exclusively with emotions like fear and anger, the amygdala is now believed to be more complicated. ... The amygdala is known to have intricate connections to primates' visual systems.
Putting this together with Steven Johnson's view of the amygdala -- that it plays a role in humans' "psychic" ability to perceive, almost subliminally, what other humans are feeling -- and you have a very interesting line of thought to pursue. What if our visual creative imagination grew from the same source as our intuitive sense of others' feelings? In other words, this amygdala research suggests that the instant intuitive assessment of people as attractive/not attractive, and the ability to size up a composition and say "that's right, this is wrong", and the ability to size up another's emotional state from very subtle, almost ineffable cues, are all drawn from the same brain space.
Put it another way: seeing something attractive and perceiving someone else's mood tickle the same area of your brain. This suggests to me that men and women are not necessarily so different in the conventional hackneyed sense that "men are visual, women are emotional". It's more a matter of emphasis, or habit: women express these thoughts emotionally, men express them sexually. There's clearly social conditioning going on there to cause and promote the difference, but the basic brain reason is very similar.
And that's how the NYT piece wraps, on this great quote:
"Differences between genders are boring," Dr. Tiefer said. "The big differences are within the sexes, between individuals. It is not the case that every person pays attention to the same thing."It's like everything else in life — eating, dancing, traveling. The whole experience is shaped by your history and by what you're paying attention to."
Some people have spent their lives paying more attention to visual composition, and their amygdalae are tuned artistically. Some people have tuned themselves to hotties of the appropriate gender(s), they're the sexual gourmands. And some have tuned themselves to emotional states; they're the communicative wizards. Of course in real life everyone is a balance of all these, but it's just a schematic.
(The preceding has been brought to you by Strata Lucida's Armchair Neuroscience Department, and should not be construed as particularly authoritative or, indeed, entirely thought out one way or another.)
(NYTimes article via, of course, Amygdala)