Are Male and Female Brains the Same or Different?

Recently I read a blog that announced there was no difference between male and female brains.  The author was too anxious to state that men’s and women’s brains are the same and therefore men and women are the same, that she missed some important information.  She didn’t read the study herself but got  her information from other articles and unfortunately passed on bogus information.

The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science examined male and female brains as a whole.  “Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain.”  The study didn’t conclude that male and female are the same.  It stated there are sex/gender differences.   What the study does is debunk the myth that there is a dividing line with male brains on one side and female brains on the other.

This study also doesn’t contradict another study also published in the PNAS in December 2013 by Ragini Verma an associate professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania medical school and her colleagues.  They researched the differences in the connections within the brain between males and females using 949 youths from 8 – 22 years of age.  Their research revealed differences in the connections between male and female brains.

The male brain has more short front and back connections that are within the same lobes or in the same hemisphere. These front and back connections exist on both sides of the brain. The female brain however, has more long connections that go across from one hemisphere to the other. Females also have connections that go from one lobe on one side of the brain to a different lobe in the other hemisphere.

They also conducted a behavioral study which also produced pronounce differences between the sexes. The behavioral study supported how different brains connections affect behavior.

This study may provide a scientific and neural basis as to why males and females excel at different tasks. Male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. Female brains however are designed to facilitate communication between the analytical and intuitive processing modes.

What I found fascinating about this study is that it states that because female connections go across brain hemispheres, women actually process information both logically and emotionally. So, women are logical but the added dimension of emotions gives us greater insight and understanding. Women can achieve a deeper and more thorough understanding of a problem or situation and therefore work with a team of people to come up with a better solution. That’s a very powerful skill to take into the workplace.

Like the other study, the brain connection study help debunk some myths. I still hear women say women process information emotionally (right brain) and men process information logically (left brain). This leads us to believe that there are distinctly different male and female brains where female brain connections are all on the right side and male brain connections are all on the left. These studies prove that wrong and should hopefully put to rest the idea that women are emotionally neurotic because we don’t use the logical and rational left side of our brain. It also debunks the myth that men purely rational.

This brain connection study also showed that the divergence between male and female brains began in youth and widened significantly into adolescence and adulthood. From youth to adulthood male brains connections consistently ran front to back. Female brains connections however continued to change, changing what parts of the brain were connected.

The study didn’t draw any conclusions as to why there are different connections in the male and female brain. It couldn’t conclude to what degree the differences natural or the result of how we are raised.

When we read these studies or articles about studies we want to be careful not to draw drastic conclusions like the other blogger did. In science there is never a “they are all the same” or a “they are all different” answer. Scientific findings fall under a bell curve. So there are many similarities between male and female brains but they are not exactly the same. Likewise there are many similarities amongst female brains but they too are not all the same.

We are only beginning the gender research to explore our similarities and differences so we are far from any conclusive results. And even when we get there, we probably won’t discover any dividing lines, only tendencies that fit under a bell curve. But that is what makes each of us unique.