Science, gender and the brain how gender stereotypes can create gender gaps
Why is history so rude about women’s brains? Does the 21st century have any new ideas about our brains? Are there gendered stereotypes in science? Can stereotypes change the brain? Could playing with LEGO make you a better scientist? This last event of the season will tell you all you wanted to know about gender differences in the brain and explain the so much debated colour battle between pink and blue from a neuroscience perspective.
Programme for the evening:
19:00 Doors open for cocktails
19:40 Tao Højgaard aka Mute State
20:30 Science, gender and the brain with Gina Rippon
21:50 Red Lama
We live in a gendered world where we are bombarded with messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis we face deeply ingrained beliefs that your sex determines your skills and preferences, from toys and colours to career choice and salaries. But what does this constant gendering mean for our thoughts, decisions and behaviour? And what does it mean for our brains?
Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that bombard us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mould our ideas of ourselves and even shape our brains.
By exploring new, cutting-edge neuroscience, Rippon urges us to move beyond a binary view of our brains and instead to see these complex organs as highly individualised, profoundly adaptable, and full of unbounded potential.
Before the talk you will have the chance of hearing the sound of Mute State, where the periodic table was translated into a long consecutive rhythmical development. Based on the filling of orbitals (quantum numbers, SPDF electrons and Pauli ́s exclusion principle), Mute state uses a principle of conversion which translates and maintains the internal relation and meaning of the orbital fillings in the periodic table into a meaningful musical development.
After the talk, straight from the the Danish psych scene, one of the newest and most powerful rockets against the infinite called Red Lama is taking the stage. Based on heavy riffs, synthesisers and thunderous drums, the band sets off for the next moment to allow the soul to rest in spiritual passages that lead the minds of the legendary South American Inca Indians. In the front, vocalist Johannes Linnet is a seductive figure, who, with an almost Jim Morrison ease, ties it all together with his powerful voice.
This event has the generous support of Novo Nordisk Fonden.
Gina Rippon
Science, gender and the brain how gender stereotypes can create gender gaps
Why is history so rude about women’s brains? Does the 21st century have any new ideas about our brains? Are there gendered stereotypes in science? Can stereotypes change the brain? Could playing with LEGO make you a better scientist?
Talk by
Gina Rippon
Gina Rippon is professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham. Rippon has also sat on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Her book, Gendered Brain: the new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain, maintains biology plays no core role in differentiating female brains from male brains. As a watershed in the history of science, Rippon considers her findings comparable to "the idea of the Earth circling around the sun".
Music by
Mute State
Tao Højgaard, aka Mute State's, origins as a jazz guitarist come from influence and involvement with Copenhagen´s jazz scene in the 90´s. Tao soon began to play with Scandinavia´s foremost jazz musicians, and rapidly became renowned for his lyrical jazz improvisations and complex harmonics. Tao cites influences including jazz guitar pioneer Jim Hall, electronic musician/composer Scott Morgan, the father of Bebop Charlie Parker, as well as a wealth of film music composers.
