Research Paper: Sex or Gender Differences in a Biopsychological Process
The specific learning objectives of the research paper are two-fold:
1. The first learning objective of the paper is to provide you with the opportunity to delve into any specific biopsychological process/disorder that interests you in a little more detail than we’re able to cover in class. To meet this objective, you will be required to choose any biopsychological process/disorder relevant to the course, and to author a 6-page report that explores this biopsychological process/disorder from the perspective of sex or gender differences. Examples of topics could include:
Differences in visual acuity between men and women
The differences in the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in men
Using differences in limbic system development to explore emotional differences across the sexes or genders
Sex or gender differences in sleep cycles and circadian rhythms
The biological basis for sex or gender differences in the prevalence of Autism
Sex or gender differences in aggression and antisociality
These are just examples to get you started. Feel free to pick any topic relevant to the course that interests you. The only constraints are that:
You must discuss sex or gender differences (be specific if you are focusing on sex or gender) related to your process/disorder of choice.
You must explain these sex or gender differences from a biopsychological perspective. Thus, it is not enough to discuss the fact that gender differences exist, and it is not appropriate to discuss the social or cultural issues that lead to these gender differences. This a neuroscience course – so I want you to delve into neuroscience to explain the gender difference you choose to discuss.
What do I mean by “biopsychological”?
As we will learn, biopsychology encompasses many related disciplines, but the common ground is the use of biological methods to study psychological processes. Sometimes we will look at things at the cellular level (ie. single-cell recordings); sometimes we will look at things at the chemical/molecular level (ie. differential release of neurotransmitters); sometimes we will look at things from the perspective of brain structure (ie. differences in the size of grey/white matter); sometimes we will look at things from the perspective of brain function (ie. differences in blood flow as seen through functional MRI or PET), and sometimes we will look at things from a neuropsychological perspective (ie. performance of healthy/lesion patients on specific neuropsychological tests).
All of these perspectives constitute biopsychological perspectives, and all are perfectly appropriate approaches to take in your report. Which approach(es) you take will very much depend on the topic you pick: the biological basis for gender differences in visual acuity may involve a discussion of differences in the rods, cones, and rhodopsin production in the retina; gender differences in aggression may involve a discussion of relevant neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin (and perhaps MRI studies on brain structure/function); discussion of gender differences in memory may involve discussion of behavioural and fMRI results during the performance of specific neuropsychological memory tests. There is no right or wrong approach to take – as long as it’s a biopsychological approach.
2. The second learning objective is to provide you with some exposure to actual research articles in the field of biopsychology. In order to accomplish learning objective #1, you are going to need to delve into the process/disorder you choose in more detail than we cover in lectures or the text. Indeed, you’re first going to need to identify the existence of sex or gender differences in the process/disorder you choose. Then you’re going to need to explore the possible biopsychological bases for those differences. To accomplish these steps, I’m going to ask that you locate, read and reference at least 5 original scientific articles relevant to the issue/disorder you choose.
Where will you find 5 original scientific articles?
There are several databases for locating scientific journal articles that OnTechU subscribes to. You can go through the library website to find PsycInfo or Pubmed, and both of these are very good options.
However, in my opinion, the easiest and best one is Google Scholar, which you can access by going to www.scholar.google.com. It’s essentially Google but focused specifically on academic journals, and it’s becoming the go-to method for professors, researchers, and students to keep up to date with the scientific literature. As an example of its power, I just plugged “gender schizophrenia fMRI” into Scholar, and it identified 54,500 potentially relevant articles in 0.06 seconds and ordered them in terms of their hypothesized relevance. You shouldn’t necessarily assume their order of relevance is completely accurate; nonetheless, in this case, the first two articles were:
Sommer, I. E., Ramsey, N. F., Mandl, R. C., & Kahn, R. S. (2003). Language lateralization in female patients with schizophrenia: an fMRI study. Schizophrenia Research, 60(2-3), 183-190.
and
Kosaka, H., Omori, M., Murata, T., Iidaka, T., Yamada, H., Okada, T., … & Wada, Y. (2002). Differential amygdala response during facial recognition in patients with schizophrenia: An fMRI study. Schizophrenia Research, 57(1), 87-95.
Wikipedia vs. Original Sources
Wikipedia is a fantastic, and surprisingly accurate, resource that students can utilize as a first step towards acquiring detailed knowledge on a topic. However, it is just that: a first step. So: absolutely feel free to search sources like Wikipedia for ideas, for background, and to provide you with a starting point for finding relevant references for your topic of interest. But do not reference Wikipedia or similar sources within your reference section. Why? Because Wikipedia does a wonderful job of referencing the original sources that provide the information it summarizes, and the second learning objective is for you to gain exposure to those original sources. So use Wikipedia and/or other internet resources for idea generation and source identification and then go find those original sources (from PsycInfo or Medline or Google Scholar, and reference them.
GRADING RUBRIC
The Research Paper will be graded out of a total of 100 marks, broken down as follows:
70% Content
· Appropriateness of the issue/disorder chosen
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