jenk

Judith Warner noted in her NY Times blog about "an old article in The Guardian by Simon Baron-Cohen on male/female brain differences...." She outlines his “empathizing-systemizing theory” of brain sex differences. The idea is that there are three common “types” of brains:

Type	Meaning
Type S brain	Strongest at understanding and building systems, aka “systemizing”
Type E brain	Stronger in empathy than systemizing.
Type B brain	People with "balanced brains" - those who are strong at both empathizing and systemizing.

Warner also quotes Baron-Cohen:

A key feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. [...] The central claim of this new theory is only that on average, more males than females have a brain of Type S, and more females than males have a brain of Type E.

Oh, and the Guardian article even has quizzes on "Systemizing Quotient" and "The Empathy Quotient". Warner (and Baron-Cohen) theorize that autism and Asperger's are extreme forms of a "Type S" brain, and is at least partially genetic.

Myself, I enjoyed the quizzes...tho I did have to take them in IE (?). I got an SQ of 62, which the test results page describes as

You have a very high ability for analysing and exploring a system. On average women score about 24 and men score about 30. Three times as many people with Asperger Syndrome score in this range, compared to typical men, and almost no women score this high.

and an EQ of 56

You have an above average ability for understanding how other people feel and responding appropriately. You know how to treat people with care and sensitivity. On average, most women score about 47 and most men about 42.

Based on their scale, this means my brain is slightly on the Type S side.