he said ben barres is somewhat better than his sister's barbara. [laughter] ben: i think that experience points out something that all of us rtrans people -- we have lived life as both genders. we have shared in intense anger at the different ways society treats men and women simply based on their gender. i think in general i think we would all say in general society -- men are competent until proven otherwise and women are considered incompetent. it is incredibly unfair barriers for women in science. i'm am trying to promote some of my time to help one in. charlie: listening to that story, i assume it may be typical in terms of somebody questioning to looking for solutions in the experience of the reaction after you have changed. what does this say about gender identity? >> i wish we knew more, charlie. we certainly know it when we see it. i want to show you a very powerful example of two identical twins who, in this case, one of the male twins -- we have proven these twins are indeed absolutely identical and born male. one of them at age three sta

ben barres is professor at an chair of near biology at standford, he lived at barra barres until he changed his sex to male in 1997. also a remarkable group of scien cyst norman spack of boston children's hospital catherine dulac of boston university melissa hines of the university of cambridge and janet hyde at the university of wisconsin at madison. i'm pleased to have all of them here and to begin this conversation with my colleague eric kandel. what are we going to talk about? >> we're going to speak about gender identity and the biology of the brain. this is a marvelous topic. and i like it in particular because it shows how brain science can be a liberating influence in our life. as we understand the biology of our own gender identity better, and become more comfortable with ourselves we become more empathic to somebody else's gender identity. and we can understand if all of a sudden at age eight nine or ten a person says i'm in the wrong body. we really can sympathize with them and understand what is going on. but this is to the only an interesting topic it's an unbelievably timely t