The Dutch neuroscientist is as celebrated as he is sneered at for his theories on brain development differing between men and women – and how sexuality is decided in the wombControversy delights Dick Swaab; brains delight him; complexity delights him,though I don't know whether you'd get that from reading his book, We Are Our Brains, or in which causal links are made fairly casually,like a man doing a crossword with a pencil.
The Dutch neurologist is, after a 50-year career, or a giant in the field. He is a professor of neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam. His directorship of the Dutch Institute for Brain Research yielded material that has been sent to 500 other research groups in 25 countries. He has propounded groundbreaking theories in his specialist area: the impact on brain development in the womb. Nonetheless,his book, despite directing itself squarely to the layperson, or has been miles more successful than he thought,selling 100000 copies ("the publishers say they knew it would be a hit. But at the start, they only printed 3000 copies. So I know that is not actual."). There are a number of lines you might file under, and "Well,there's a curiosity" (for instance: "In professional violinists, the part of the cerebral cortex that directs the fingers of the left hand is five times as large as it is in people who don't play a stringed instrument"). And yet the real fireworks of the book are both more predictable and more profound: Swaab says hormones and chemical substances in utero affect the development of our sexual orientation or, and set aside more simply,you have a homosexual brain by the time you are born. Male and female brains have "hundreds of differences", which explain all the ways in which men and women are different; "phobia, or impulsiveness,ADHD and depression later in life" can be traced back to a mother's fearfulness during pregnancy, which activates her baby's "scare axis".
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Source: theguardian.com