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By Cliodhna O’Connor Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The investigation of intergroup difference is a ubiquitous dimension of biological and behavioural research involving human subjects. Understanding almost any aspect of human variation involves the comparison of a group of people, who are defined by some common attribute, with a reference group which does not share that attribute. This is an inescapable corollary of applying the scientific method to study human minds, bodies and societies. However, this scientific practice can have unanticipated – and undesirable – social consequences. As my own research has shown in the contexts of psychiatric diagnosis (O’Connor, Kadianaki, Maunder, & McNicholas, in press), gender (O’Connor & Joffe, 2014) and sexual orientation (O’Connor, 2017), scientific accounts of intergroup differences can often function to reinforce long-established stereotypes, exaggerate the homogeneity of social groups, and impose overly sharp divisions between...

By Ann E. Fink Ann Fink is currently the Wittig Fellow in Feminist Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with an appointment in Gender and Women’s Studies and concurrent affiliations with Psychology and the Center for Healthy Minds. Her research in cellular and behavioral neuroscience has appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, PNAS and other journals. Ann’s interdisciplinary work addresses the ethics of neuroscience in relation to gender, mental health and social justice.  Emotionality and gender are tied together in the popular imagination in ways that permeate mental health research. At first glance, gender, emotion, and mental health seem like a simple equation: when populations are divided in two, women show roughly double the incidence of depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders 1-3 . Innate biological explanations are easy to produce in the form of genes or hormones. It could be tempting to conclude that being born with XX chr...

by Arthur T. Ryan, M.A. and Elaine F. Walker, Ph.D. Arthur Ryan is a graduate student in clinical psychology at Emory University. His research focuses on understanding the etiology and neuropathology underlying severe mental illness. Elaine Walker is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Emory University and is the Director of the Development and Mental Health Research Program, which is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health. Her research is focused on child and adolescent development and the brain changes that are associated with adolescence. She is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board. Arthur Ryan, M.A. Over the past several decades, there has been a significant effort to minimize bias against individuals based on ethnicity and other demographic factors through the creation of seemingly impartial and objective criteria across a host of domains. For example, when the United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines wer...

Men and women experience fluctuations in sexual motivation over a lifetime. Whether sexual desire is enhanced or diminished at any particular time can depend on a number of factors and circumstances, but researchers from McGill University recently set out to determine specifically how pain impacts sexual behavior. 1 Results from this study , published in The Journal of Neuroscience earlier this year, were the topic of the most recent “Neuroethics and Neuroscience in the News” discussion facilitated by Emory Women’s Gender and Sexuality graduate student Natalie Turrin and Neuroscience graduate student Mallory Bowers. To study how pain impacts sexual motivation, researchers used a partitioned Plexiglas chamber where the partition contained small, semi-circular openings only large enough for the female mice to pass through (this study required that male mice be greater than 45 g and female mice smaller than 25 g). In this set-up, the females were free to either cross the partit...

Mallory Bowers is a 5th year Neuroscience doctoral candidate working with Dr. Kerry Ressler at Emory University. Prior to graduate school, Mallory received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. Mallory is interested in behavioral neuroscience, with a particular focus on how neural plasticity contributes to learning. With Dr. Ressler, Mallory is using a mouse model of exposure-based psychotherapy to better understand the neurobiology of learned fear. Specifically, her research focuses on a potential interaction between the cholecystokinin and endogenous cannabinoid systems that may underlie extinction of cued fear. Mallory was on the organizing committee for the 2013 “Bias in the Academy” Conference and is President of Emory Women in Neuroscience (E-WIN). As I’ve become more entrenched in the PTSD field, I’ve been struck by the prominent sex/gender difference in the prevalence of PTSD (among many other psychiatric disorders) and the categorical use of male animal m...

Continued from Part I . In Part II, Dr. van Anders discusses her website, www.gapjunctionscience.org . How did Gap Junction Science come about? Prior to Gap Junction, how did you find and network with feminist scientists? I became really interested in the doing of feminist science – it felt very hard for me to figure things out, and there wasn’t that much community of actual feminist scientists. I wanted to develop a place where feminist science could be discussed – both practice and theory. I sometimes hear people talk about the theory as if it is practice. Of course it’s relevant, but you know what they say about theory and practice: in theory, they’re the same, in practice, they’re not. I was lucky that while I was thinking about these things, there was a call for grants at UM from our ADVANCE program for online networks in science that promote diversity. Feminism isn’t necessarily diverse, but the feminist science I envision at its heart attends to diversity. So, I wanted a space...

Dr. van Anders *Editor's note. The title of this post is the title of Sari van Anders' talk sponsored by Emory Women in Neuroscience on March 20th. This post is the first of a two-part series. Mallory Bowers, a 5th year graduate student at Emory University and President of Emory Women in Neuroscience, interviewed Dr. Sari van Anders an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, for the Neuroethics Women Leaders group. Dr. van Anders received her Ph.D. in Biological and Cognitive Psychology from Simon Fraser University. Her current research program focuses on “social neuroendocrinology, intimacy (sexuality/pair bonding, nurturance), evolution, health, gender/sex and sexual diversity, and research and feminist science practice." The interview will be published in a two part presentation. In Part I, she discusses her path to becoming a critical feminist scientist, the pitfalls of research on sex/gender differenc...