Media
Media
Explore the world of neuroscience and gender research through an extensive collection of Prof. Joel’s videos about the interplay between our brains and gender that challenge simplistic assumptions of binary gender categories.
This series of lecture presentations, panel discussions and interviews is a unique opportunity to expand your knowledge and understanding of the science behind our experience of gender and its real-world implications for individuals and society as a whole, providing a more inclusive perspective on gender identity and expression.
Whether you’re new to the field or well-versed in gender studies, this media section invites you to reconsider your preconceptions about gender, and promises to be a valuable resource for gaining information and appreciation for the diversity of the human experience, as Prof. Joel shares her inspiring, stereotypes-breaking research and translates her expertise to an engaging communication style, making complex scientific concepts and her significant findings and insights accessible to a broad audience, from students and researchers to anyone interested in the intersection of neuroscience and gender studies
A Future with No Gender
In this TEDx Talk (2022), Prof. Daphna Joel challenges the gender binary social system, which assigns roles and expectations to people based on their sex organs. She describes a decade-long research project in which she and her team studied brain structure and psychological traits of over 20,000 people. The findings show that there are no “male” or “female” brains. Instead, each brain and each individual possesses a unique mosaic of feminine and masculine characteristics. Joel invites us to imagine a world with no gender, in which we could all celebrate our unique mosaics
Are Brains Male or Female?
In this TEDx Talk (2012), Prof. Daphna Joel explores the myth that men are from Mars and women from Venus because men have male brains and women have female brains. She challenges the myth using evidence from neuroscience demonstrating that sex differences in the brain could be opposite under different conditions, and presents for the first time her hypothesis (which she later confirmed in the brains of humans and animals) that brains are unique mosaics of male and female characteristics
It’s All in Your Head: Sex, Gender, and the Brain
Prof. Daphna Joel discuss whether biological sex is an illusion constructed from human categories that we can overcome or refashion with Prof. Barry Barnes and Dr. Stuart Ritchie on the Institute of Art and Ideas (2020)
Head Games: Sex, Gender, and the Brain
Prof. Daphna Joel, Dr. Jordan Peterson, and Prof. Margaret McCarthy discuss the nature-nurture origins of gender differences, on TVO’s The Agenda (2015).
Rethinking Sex, Brain, and Gender: Beyond the Binary
The sex binary is not simply one of several competing theories regarding human brain and behavior within science. Rather, it is a taken-for-granted starting point that biases the scientific exploration of the relations between sex and brain and behavior. Using the case of the brain, Prof. Daphna Joel describes how data from animal studies challenge the binary framework and open a new way – the mosaic hypothesis – of thinking about ‘sex itself’ and its relations with brain and behavior. Applying varied analytical methods to the structure of over 5,000 human brains, her research found that most brains comprise of unique ‘mosaics’ of both features that are more common in women and features that are more common in men; the brain architectures typical of women are also typical of men; and sex category provides little information on human brain structure
Sex, Gender and Brain. A Problem of Conceptualization
Prof. Daphna Joel keynote address at the international, interdisciplinary conference on sex, gender, and the brain "NeuroCultures – NeuroGenderings II" (2012) on how current psychological research reveals that sex differences in the brain are rarely dichotomous, and the same is true for sex differences in gender characteristics. In the few domains in which consistent sex-differences are found there is a considerable overlap between the distributions of the two sexes. Individuals possess a complicated array of masculine and feminine characteristics, and there is evidence that environmental factors can change the form of specific brain characteristics from the “male” form to the “female” form or vice versa. The result of these complex interactions of sex and environment is an intersex brain composed of a mosaic of male and female brain characteristics, rather than being all male or all female. The division of individuals into men and women and of brains into male brains and female brains adds little information
Mosaic Brains in a Multidimensional Space
Prof. Daphna Joel’s lecture, “Rethinking Sex and the Brain: From Dimorphism to Mosaic,” at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (EMFCSC) 45th Workshop, “Sex Differences, Dimorphisms, Divergences: Impact on Brain and Behavior in Health and Disease” (2019)
SeXX and SeXY: A Dialogue on the Question of the Female Brain and the Male Brain
A dialogue between Prof. Daphna Joel and Dr. Louann Brizendine on whether human brains are “female” or “male”, at The Basic and Translational Neuroscience Research Symposium on Sex Differences (2013) that launched the Stanford Center for Health Research on Women and Sex Differences in Medicine (WSDM or “wisdom” center)
Sex, Brain and Psychopathology
Prof. Daphna Joel’s lecture on why there are sex differences in psychopathology even though brains themselves don’t have sex at The Basic and Translational Neuroscience Research Symposium on Sex Differences (2013) that launched the Stanford Center for Health Research on Women and Sex Differences in Medicine (WSDM or “wisdom” center).