Scientists Prove Men’s and Women’s Brains Really Do Work Differently

Yes, there is a difference in how the brain operates based on gender. A study conducted by scientists from Stanford University found this to be the case by using a new artificial intelligence model that was more than 90% successful at determining whether scans of brain activity came from a woman or a man.

So, there really is a biological reason behind women are more likely to enjoy romances or “chic flics” and men are more likely to enjoy sports. And this might help couples that are having difficulties; acknowledging that different genders’ brains work differently could help people to simply accept certain conflicts as being an inevitable due to nature.

The researchers explained that the extent to which a person’s sex affects how their brain is organized and operates has long been a point of dispute among scientists. While we know the sex chromosomes we are born with help determine the cocktail of hormones our brains are exposed to — particularly during early development, puberty and aging — researchers have long struggled to connect sex to concrete differences in the human brain. Brain structures tend to look much the same in men and women, and previous research examining how brain regions work together has also largely failed to turn up consistent brain indicators of sex.

“A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders,” said Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory. “Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

Menon is the study’s senior author. The lead authors are senior research scientist Srikanth Ryali, PhD, and academic staff researcher Yuan Zhang, PhD.

“Hotspots” that most helped the model distinguish male brains from female ones include the default mode network, a brain system that helps us process self-referential information, and the striatum and limbic network, which are involved in learning and how we respond to rewards.

The scientists say that their model’s success suggests that detectable sex differences do exist in the brain but just haven’t been picked up reliably before.

“The fact that it worked so well in different datasets, including brain scans from multiple sites in the U.S. and Europe, make the findings especially convincing as it controls for many confounds that can plague studies of this kind,” they said.

“Our AI models have very broad applicability,” Menon said. “A researcher could use our models to look for brain differences linked to learning impairments or social functioning differences, for instance — aspects we are keen to understand better to aid individuals in adapting to and surmounting these challenges.”