The Male Brain

Louann Brizendine M.D.

Louann Brizendine M.D. is a doctor in psychiatry and neuroscience and has researched in these fields and in behavioral endocrinology. That gives her insight and studies in behavioral health, neurology, hormonal chemistry, and biochemistry. In other words, she has the most current scientific knowledge on how our brain chemicals work on all our bodily processes. Early in her career she discovered chemical and physical differences between female and male brains and has spent much of her career studying those difference, especially in females.

Of course studying one sex's physiology also means studying the other. She wrote and published The Female Brain about three years ago. This book is the follow up. I picked up The Male Brain because I saw it in one of my medical headline searches.

I found this book very interesting. Dr. Brizendine breaks down the life cycle into stages from in utero to old age. She has charts at the beginning of the book identifying the purpose of different parts of the brain, the major neurohormones, and showing different life phases, active neurohormones, comparisons with the female brain, and the realities of each phase. Those charts were helpful references as I read through the book. I could go back and forth for quick snapshots while reading her explanations.

Throughout the book Dr. Brizendine shows how the different neurohomones are working in the brain. The most commonly known, testosterone, is very active in a fetus, then drops away at birth until puberty. But other neurohomones are at work differentiating boys from girls. As she goes through the different phases of a male's life, she shows the shift of neurohormone levels, thus affecting how a man acts.

This book is full of clinical study information and anecdotal stories to illustrate the studies and science involving the brain. She uses stories from her patients, grown son, and husband that show what she has found in those studies. The Male Brain sounds like pop culture. Yet Dr. Brizendine's credentials are quite sound and impressive and she has been in the field for many years.

Also, this book is well documented. Only half the book is her narrative. The other half is full of clinical notes, studies, articles snippets, references, and bibliography. There's much we still don't know about the human brain, male or female. But what we do know helps us understand some of the reasons why we act like we do. Now I know I'm going to have to borrow a copy of The Female Brain.