Men and women really are wired differently. A new gender-based study that involved mapping brains found a striking contrast in neural circuitry that its authors are calling the “hunter vs. gatherer divide.” The brain-circuit maps “provide a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks, and women at others,” says Ragini Verma, an associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine, tells the Los Angeles Times. (click below to read more)
Researchers looked at the brains of about 950 young people, using an MRI technique. The result was a map of each person’s connectome, or brain network, highlighting the fiber pathways that link different regions. In general, male brains were found to have more connections from front to back within one hemisphere, which makes them optimized for coordinating perception with action, such as learning a new sport or following directions to a location. Female brains generally have more connections between the left and right hemispheres, which enables them to integrate emotion, reason, and social cues in responding to situations. But Verma said these gender differences are not hard and fast, varying from individual to individual, and that it is unclear how much social conditioning combined with hormonal differences to shape neural connections. “Every individual could have part of both men and women in them,” she said.
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