Science scans male and female brains - and confirms stereotypes

A new study confirms what many people have always suspected - that men and women’s brains are wired in completely different ways.

Scientists have taken brain scans from almost 1,000 people and compiled the data to make ‘maps’ of the brain.

Their results suggest that men are better suited to co-ordinate perception and action, while women seem to have an advantage in linking analytical and intuitive reasoning.

Writing in a scientific journal, the scientific team said the results showed “fundamental sex differences in the structural architecture of the human brain” - and these differences have confirmed many old stereotypes.

Men generally have more connections within each hemisphere of the brain, while in women the two halves of the brain are much more interlinked.

Brains of men also contain more nerve fibres and those of women a greater proportion of “grey matter” - the cell bodies of neurons.

Research done in the past has already shown many differences in the sexes. Men, for example, tend to have better motor skills and three-dimensional spatial ability – the skill to “see” things in three dimensions in the mind.

The team of scientists from Pennsylvania used MRI scans on the “white matter” – the pathways in our bring that nerve signals travel along – to map them in almost 1,000 people aged eight to 22.

Only a few differences between the sexes were seen in children younger than 13, the scientists found. However, they became pronounced in adolescents aged 14 to 17 and older young adults.

Interestingly, only one part of the brain was the other way around, with more connectivity between hemispheres in men and more within hemispheres in women the cerebellum.

Part of the so-called “reptilian” hind-brain, the cerebellum is the most ancient brain region and controls muscle movement, co-ordination, and balance.

So, perhaps men really are better at spatial reasoning (reading maps), while women have a natural knack for reading people emotionally and thinking things through logically at once.