Find out your brainsex

A neuropsychologist who writes about male and female-oriented brains is at the front line of the struggle to try and make the boys in Britain's schools enthusiastic about learning.

Dr Ann Moir has applied her knowledge of gender differences to the classroom and devised a series of radical - some say controversial - tactics that have resulted in schools encouraging and teaching boys to “play-fight”.

Body sex does not necessarily match brain sex so Dr Moir has devised a test to determine the gender of the brain.

Answer yes or no depending on whether you agree or not with the following statements:

1 It's easy for me to sing in tune, singing alone

2 When I was younger, winning was really important to me

3 It's easy for me to hear what people are saying in a crowded room

4 As a child I enjoyed going as high as possible when climbing trees

5 If someone interrupts what I am doing it's difficult to go back to it

6 I find it easy to do more than one thing at once

7 I find it easy to know what someone is feeling just by looking at their face

8 I like to collect things and sort them into categories

9 I solve problems more often with intuition than logic

10 As a child, I loved playing games where I pretended to be someone I knew or a character I had created

11 At school it was easy for me to write neatly

12 As a child, I enjoyed taking things apart to see how they work

13 I get bored easily so I need to keep doing new things

14 I don't like fast speeds, they make me nervous

15 I enjoy reading novels more then non-fiction.

16 I can find my way more easily using a map rather than landmark directions

17 I keep in regular contact with my friends and family

18 As a child, I enjoyed physical sports

19 Imagining things in three dimensions is easy for me. For example: I can see in my mind's eye just how an architects' drawings or plans will look once built

20 As a child, I loved doing things like 'wheelies' on my bike

Now work out your score and turn over to see how ‘male’ or ‘female’ your brain is:

If you answered ‘Yes’ to questions: 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17 score 1 point each.

(‘No’ answers to these questions receive 0 points.)

If you answered ‘No’ to questions: 2, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20 score 1 point each.

(‘Yes’ answers to these questions receive 0 points.)

How to work out how ‘male’ or ‘female’ your brain is

• The higher your score out of twenty, the more female your brain.

• Middle scores show a more mixed brain.

• The lower the score out of twenty, the more male your brain.

Very Male Very Female

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

To take part in the brainsex survey go to http://www.brainsexmatters.com/

Other indicators of brainsex:

Hands are a further marker for brain organisation. Combining the questionnaire results together with the following finger pattern result may give you a clearer picture of your brain organisation.

Which hand pattern most fits yours?

A large number of studies show that comparative finger length matches brain organisation.

The key digits, counting from your thumb, are the 2nd and 4th digits (your index and ring fingers respectively). When looking at your own hands, you should view them with the palms towards you and measure from the crease at the base of your finger.

• A typical male brain correlates with:

The index finger (2nd digit) is shorter than the ring finger (4th digit).

• A typical female brain correlates with:

The index and ring fingers are the same length; occasionally the index finger is longer than the ring finger.

Sometimes, however, one hand is the male pattern and the other the female pattern – this requires further research as to the significance for brain organisation.

Background to Brainsex Test

The questions are based on a very large number of sex differences found in the research. Body sex does not necessarily match brain sex. In my experience many of us have mixed brain – we fall on a continuum.

There are a large number of studies that show relative digit length correlate with many male/female patterns of behaviour.

Parents lose court fight to keep baby OT alive

The parents of a gravely ill baby boy failed last night in their attempt to overturn a court ruling that gave doctors the power to end his treatment and allow him to die.

Born in May last year, the nine-month-old baby suffers from a rare metabolic disease and has lived in an intensive care unit since he was three weeks old, kept alive on a ventilator.

On Thursday a judge at the High Court ruled that the baby, named only as OT, was in constant pain and gave the medical team treating him the right to stop painful invasive treatment and to take him off the ventilator, replacing that treatment with palliative care.

But Mrs Justice Parker placed a temporary stay on the order to allow the child’s parents to try to reverse the decision at the Court of Appeal.

Last night that attempt failed. Two judges — Lord Justice Ward and Lord Justice Wilson — refused them permission to challenge the ruling.

Lord Justice Ward had been told that the parents could not face hearing the decision of the court and were waiting outside. “We are not unmindful of the horror of their predicament,” he said.

The parents of baby OT do not accept that his condition is as serious as doctors have claimed and still believe that he could one day recover, go home and go to school. They want doctors to keep him alive as long as possible, so long as that does not cause him unacceptable suffering.

Lord Justice Ward asked their lawyers to pass on the message that although the hearing seeking permission to appeal had been conducted “in a brusque, uncaring, unfeeling way on a crude issue of law”, it was impossible not to feel the “deepest sympathy for their predicament”.

“One has great respect and admiration for them,” he said.

The judges said that they would give their reasons for rejecting permission to appeal at a later date. The court order allowing doctors to withdraw treatment now comes into effect immediately, though Caroline Harry Thomas, QC, for the NHS Trust involved, which cannot be identified, told the court that “there will be no unseemly rush” to withdraw treatment.

The parents of OT said that they were “devastated”. The Court of Appeal ruling follows a ten-day hearing, partly conducted at the baby’s bedside this week, which Mrs Justice Parker described as a “desperately sad and anguished case”.

The baby’s condition was deteriorating and at one stage it was thought that he would not last the week.

She rejected claims by the father that doctors and nurses treating the child had infected him to speed up his death and that they could have done more. At his bedside this week she said the father had tried to interfere with treatment and shouted: “This is murder! This is murder!” She said this outburst was a result of the terrible strain of the situation.

She accepted that the baby’s parents “love him devotedly” but said the father’s belief that he would one day go to school was “sadly, wholly unrealistic”.

She said the child was already suffering severe brain damage and that after his latest relapse, it was possible that his lungs had been damaged. The evidence suggested that he would not live more than three years: he faced a future of progressive organ failure and invasive treatment to keep him alive.

As well as granting orders to take the child off the ventilator, she gave doctors and nurses the right not to keep him alive with painful invasive treatment. One doctor said what they were doing amounted to torture.

The judge said that she accepted that “the sanctity of life is not absolute, requiring treatment that is futile”.

Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the BMA’s Medical Ethics Committee, said there was “a good deal of case law” surrounding such cases.

“Sometimes there will be an agreement between the medical team and the parents. Where that breaks down and where the medical team feel that there is undue stress being put on a child, undue pain and with no chance of a decent outcome the medical team will go to the court and ask them to determine it.”

Cruel dilemmas

— Charlotte Wyatt was born in 2003 — three months prematurely and weighing only 1 lb — with severe brain and lung damage. Her parents won a court battle to ensure that she was revived in the event of a collapse. The child survived with severe disabilities, but living in care, as her parents struggled to meet her 24-hour healthcare needs

— In 2004 Luke Winston-Jones died at the age of ten months, at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool. Doctors had been granted permission by the High Court to withhold life-saving treatment by “aggressive” medical ventilation. Luke had been born with Edwards syndrome, a rare genetic disorder

— In 2006 a child identified only as MB, suffering from a degenerative muscle-wasting disease, was given the right to be kept alive on a life-support machine against the wishes of his doctors

— In 2007 Mr Justice Holman ruled that a seriously ill baby girl should undergo a bone marrow transplant that would give her a 50 per cent chance of life, despite her parents’ wish to spare her further suffering.

Mosquito laser gun offers new hope on malaria

AMERICAN scientists are making a ray gun to kill mosquitoes. Using technology developed under the Star Wars anti-missile programme, the zapper is being built in Seattle where astrophysicists have created a laser that locks onto airborne insects.

Scientists have speculated for years that lasers might be used against mosquitoes, which kill nearly 1m people a year through malaria.

The laser – dubbed a weapon of mosquito destruction (WMD) – has been designed with the help of Lowell Wood, one of the astrophysicists who worked on the original Star Wars plan to shield America from nuclear attack.

“We like to think back then we made some contribution to the ending of the cold war,” Dr Jordin Kare, another astrophysicist, told The Wall Street Journal. “Now we’re just trying to make a dent in a war that’s claimed a lot more lives.” The WMD laser works by detecting the audio frequency created by the beating of mosquito wings. A computer triggers the laser beam, the mosquito’s wings are burnt off and its smoking carcass falls to the ground. The research is backed by Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire.

It is speculated that lasers could shield villages or be fired at swarming insects from patrolling drone aircraft. “You could kill billions of mosquitoes a night,” said one expert.