It turned out than the female brain different from men’s
An international group of scientists conducted a major study to find out how and in what way different the woman’s brain from the brain of a man. The results of the work they have placed on the portal preprints and BioRxiv. Briefly they can be found on the website of the publishing house “Science”.
For decades, various scientists have confirmed that on average the brains of men has a slightly larger volume than women, even corrected for differences in body size. However, a more detailed examination (e.g. differences in volume of individual brain structures) to be difficult. In addition, most studies were based on a small amount of material (less than 100 samples), which did not allow to make generalizations.
In their paper, the researchers used data from the UK Biobank, a long-term medical study, which involved about 500 thousand people. Scientists had available MRI 2750 2466 women and men aged 44 to 77 years. The study authors measured the volume of 68 brain regions, as well as the thickness of the crust.
It turned out that the average cortex in women significantly thicker than men.
At the same time, men like the brain as a whole and each of the studied regions (including hippocampus, amygdala, striatum and the thalamus) on average had a greater volume than in women.
These same metrics (brain volume and thickness of cortex) among men differed much stronger. This conclusion echoes the results of previous studies, which found that the scatter of the test results on the level of intelligence also depends on gender.
“Past work showed no differences in the average level of intelligence, but the results ranged men are stronger than women. Therefore, it is interesting the volumes of brain structures. They meet many other evidence that men are more different physically and mentally,” — said one of the authors, postdoc, University of Edinburgh Stuart Ritchie.
The study authors noted that the differences in the indices of the brain in people of one sex exceed the differences between the sexes, so to determine the sex characteristics of the brain is almost impossible.