'"The notion that you can ‘sex’ a brain... has inaccurately driven brain science for several centuries, underpins many damaging stereotypes and, I believe, stands in the way of social progress and equality of opportunity."
Gina Rippon is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Birmingham. Her research involves state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate how the brain interacts with its world, and what happens when this process goes wrong. She is an outspoken critic of "neurotrash," the populist misuse of neuroscience research to misrepresent our understanding of the brain, particularly to prop up outdated gender stereotypes.
In her new book The Gendered Brain, she challenges the idea that there are two sorts of "hardwired" brains, male and female, and instead offers a 21st-century model for a better understanding of how brains get to be different.
"Rippon takes a scalpel to the research surrounding sex differences in the brain with precision and humour." — Sue Nelson