There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper

[TomOfSweden]

Are you sure that is what testosterone present in the womb means? I read some stuff that ties testosterone in the womb to the size of the placenta. Which is a different matter and not dependent on the sex of the baby.

High testosterone levels means bigger placenta and therefore bigger baby and therefore bigger brain. Bigger brain means smarter.

Women want to have as small placenta and baby as possible while men want it to be as big as possible. There's basically a war going on in the uterus. The man doesn't care about the woman.. only the baby. While the woman on the other hand cares more for her own life than the babies. Yes, I'm anthropomorphising our genome. I'm not talking about opinions here. The male sperm also tries to send mind controlling hormones to the woman to make her anxious and more careful, while the woman has functions to kill these hormones. Having babies is not a particularly beautiful or cooperative act seen from the cellular level.

I read a report not long ago linking high testosterone levels in the womb to autism. Basically, since big brains are favoured this mechanic is selected for so we get a situation where the selected genes have now hit a roof for how high it can go and still be useful. These are one of the proofs that we're still right in the middle of human evolution.

I'm pretty sure few people can agree on how to measure intelligence.

[fetishdj]

None of what I said was dependent on the gender of the baby at all... you are mistakingly considering testosterone to be linked to 'maleness', which it is to a certain extent but not in the context we are talking about here.

The placental size theory may be the mechanism. Last thing I read on it, they had only just linked serum levels (in the mother) with brain development of the foetus and I am not sure if they had linked it directly through some mechanism. All they knew at the time was that if the mother has high serum testosterone there is a greater probability of the child being born left handed rather than right handed and the theory was that this was because testosterone influenced the growth of the brain. Its been more than ten year since I read up on this for a Psychology module project so presumably there have been advancements since

[MissElizabeth87]

High testosterone levels means bigger placenta and therefore bigger baby and therefore bigger brain. Bigger brain means smarter.

Bigger brain does not mean smarter. Human beings only use about 3 percent of their brain anyways, and this number actually goes DOWN as the brain increases in size, for the most part. (Sidenote: autistic children and children with certain other neural disorders actually use more of their brain. Maybe they are really more intelligent than we are). A child CAN be smarter and have a bigger brain, but a more intelligent child can actually have a smaller than normal brain. Intelligence is in no way linked to brain size. At least, not by any credited studies. Aside from that, children with a number of neural genetic disorders actually have larger brains than normal... most of them are considered "mentally retarded", which would mean they are not, in a conventional sense, considered intelligent.

I read a report not long ago linking high testosterone levels in the womb to autism. Basically, since big brains are favoured this mechanic is selected for so we get a situation where the selected genes have now hit a roof for how high it can go and still be useful. These are one of the proofs that we're still right in the middle of human evolution.

Autism is generally defined, on a cellular level, as the brain not going through a natural process which is basically like pruning- cells we don't need for cultural reasons are "cut out". This happens to all human beings- babies are born with 100,000,000,000 brain cells... Adults generally have 5 million. You do the math there. I had a professor explain it like this... Our brains are born with a bunch of back roads... so as infants, it takes awhile to get to a thought... by the time we are adults, we have built our brain into super high ways, it doesn't take as long to complete a thought, but there are fewer exits. Autistic children never build highways in their minds. And many "geniuses" have been thought to have had some form of high functioning autism-Beethoven included. That would make both you and fetishdj right. And there have been NO conclusive decisions on what it is that causes autism. Period. There have been theories, which have been tested out and found correct in some studies and false in others. There are no real answers right now. Just "maybes".

I'm pretty sure few people can agree on how to measure intelligence.

Very few people indeed agree on how to measure intelligence. Even the usual things to measure intelligence are very flawed. For instance, the Stanford-Binet IQ test. I have a friend who scored just above average on that test. By maybe a point. She can do complicated math problems correctly in her head. Like... Calculus 6 level math problems. That doesn't sound like average intelligence to me. I have another friend who scored well into the "genius" category. She herself insists she is nothing special, she's just always enjoyed puzzles-which is exactly what that test is. There are something like 20 or 30 definitions of intelligence that are used in psychological circles today. No one can really agree on what makes a person intelligent. IQ tests in general are difficult because they are very biased towards race, gender, and even age.

[TomOfSweden]

Bigger brain does not mean smarter. Human beings only use about 3 percent of their brain anyways, and this number actually goes DOWN as the brain increases in size, for the most part. (Sidenote: autistic children and children with certain other neural disorders actually use more of their brain. Maybe they are really more intelligent than we are). A child CAN be smarter and have a bigger brain, but a more intelligent child can actually have a smaller than normal brain. Intelligence is in no way linked to brain size. At least, not by any credited studies. Aside from that, children with a number of neural genetic disorders actually have larger brains than normal... most of them are considered "mentally retarded", which would mean they are not, in a conventional sense, considered intelligent.

Well actually brain size and intelligence are linked. Or rather how big the brain size is in proportion to the rest of the body. What I wrote was, that there's a ceiling where our body "design" can't handle further increases. Which is if I understand correctly is what you're saying to. The selected genes promoting further proportional growth just aren't helpful any more. Because that's how evolution works. It's a bit like having a city but with the infrastructure of a village. On the whole, you'd be better off staying the size of a village. What might happen is that among autists a mutation might occur which makes them a new super intelligent type of human. All perfectly in line with evolution. But that's pure speculation. It might simply be another dead end.