Study Finds Gender Differences in Neural Connections

Research led by a team at the University of Pennsylvania has found gender differences in the biology of men and women’s brains. Using more than 1,000 brain scans, the researchers found that women’s brains tended to be highly connected across the left and right hemispheres. But in men’s brains, the strongest neural connections were between the front and back regions of the brain.

The authors state: “The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.”

Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Guardian newspaper, “If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there’s a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better.”

The article, “Sex Differences in the Structural Connectome of the Human Brain,” was published on the website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It may be accessed here.