and the differences between them can be understood systematically, we can
surmise that a similar research project can be applied meaningfully to com-
pare the brains of people living at great geographical distances. So far, there is
no indication that the brains of any two populations on Earth would
be significantly more different than the brains of me and my neighbor in
Germany. That is to say, tens of thousands of years of separation of European
populations from Native American populations, for example, did not result in
any significant anatomical difference in their brains. If so, our brains are
probably not significantly different from the brains of people who lived in
the ancient Mediterranean. Their individual life histories shaped their brains
in several ways just as different life histories shape the brains of anyone living
on Earth today. Such differences can be understood by studying the shared
structure of our brains and learning how environmental factors shape them.
(3) Afinal word is due about the existence of gender differences. We will
say more about gender at different points of this book, but here we can at least
mention two important research results. First, there is no major structural
difference between the brains of men and women on average (where we simply
speak of biological sex as determined by the presence or absence of the
Y chromosome). Men’s brains are somewhat larger on the average and
women’s brains contain deeper and more gyri (ridges) on their cortex, so
the total surface of the cortex is about equal (Kalat, 2016, p. 98). This is not
to say that there are no gender-related differences in brain anatomy. For
example, men have more white matter (which as you remember consists of
axons) and the organization of their brains is less dense than that of women
(Tomasi & Volkow, 2012). A recent neuroimaging study has found more
connections between the two hemispheres of women than between the two
hemispheres of men and more connection within the hemispheres of men
than within the hemispheres of women (Ingalhalikar et al., 2014). Yet we just
simply do not know enough about such differences to make any sound
conclusions as to how they influence functions and how they are related to
cognitive and behavioral differences.
The study of gender-related differences in cognition and behavior, in
turn, has delivered a wealth of interesting results, some of which are highly
significant for the study of religion. Some of this work has inspired popular
psychology and went into public discourse in very questionable forms, often
merely echoing existing gender stereotypes. Although this subject points well
beyond the scope of this chapter, let us briefly signify the general trends that
have been identified by empirical research (Halpern, 2012, pp. 91–156). Dif-
ferences have been found between male and female cognition in many areas,
such as language, spatial imagination, understanding of other minds (empathy,
Theory of Mind) and memory. All of these differences are very small on
average. However, there are sometimes huge differences when it comes to
60 Cognitive Science and the New Testament