Author of "The Male Brain" to Talk About Her New Book
Louann Brizendine, MD, a neuropsychiatrist, educator, clinician and writer, will talk about her newly released book, “The Male Brain,” from noon to 1 p.m. on Thursday, April 29.
Brizendine, the Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, also will sign books at the event to be held in the UCSF School of Nursing, room N 217, on the Parnassus campus. Her talk, which is free and open to the public, will be simulcast to Rock Hall Auditorium on the UCSF Mission Bay campus.
Brizendine is an endowed professor of clinical psychiatry at UCSF’s Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. She received her BS degree from UC Berkeley in Neurobiology and her MD degree from Yale. She served her residency at Harvard, where she also served on the faculty.
In her newly released book, Brizendine turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the “male reality” is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:
- is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine,
- thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy,
- has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, and
- experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceives others’ faces to be more aggressive.
Her talk at UCSF is co-sponsored by the Center for Gender Equity and the Student Activity Center.
Louann Brizendine
Brizendine founded the UCSF Women’s Mood and Hormone (WMH) Clinic and continues to serve as its’ director. The WMH clinic is a unique psychiatric clinic designed to assess and treat women of all ages experiencing disruption of mood, energy, anxiety, sexual function and well-being due to hormonal influences on the brain. Brizendine sees men, women and teen girls in the WMH clinic.
In addition, Brizendine instructs and supervises residents, fellows and medical students in the WMH clinic throughout the year, helping young doctors learn more about this important area in women’s mental, sexual and physical health. She annually teaches courses to medical students and residents throughout the country addressing the topics of the brain effects of hormones, mood disorders, anxiety problems and sexual interest changes due to hormones. She is an expert on the effects of testosterone on sex drive in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women.
Brizendine has taken her interest in hormonal and health issues for girls and women into the public forum by doing interviews with the media, lecturing, writing and consulting on the topics of development of the female brain, the teen girl brain, hormones, mood, memory and sexual function. Her first book, “The Female Brain,” was published in 2006.
Related Links:
Going Inside ‘The Male Brain’
ABC News Video, March 24, 2010
Neuropsychiatrist Explains Why Female Brains Are Different
UCSF Today, April 9, 2007