What is the difference between male and female brains?

Não đàn ông và phụ nữ có gì khác nhau? - 1 — Even with modern medicine today, we still cannot find a satisfactory answer to the differences of the human brain (Photo: Getty).

We know that men are generally larger in appearance, build, and height than women. But what about the internal organs, typically the brain?

The question of whether there are tangible differences between male and female brains is actually one of the most fascinating, and also most controversial, questions in the history of neuroscience .

Along with that are related questions such as: Are men's brains bigger or women's brains bigger? Do men's or women's brains have more neurons...

From a historical perspective

The idea that there is something fundamentally different between male and female brains has actually been around since the 19th century.

The idea of comparing men's and women's brains marked the rise of feminism, anti-monopoly, and the overwhelming male influence, says cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon.

The idea of comparing brains, then, was simple: A bigger brain meant higher intelligence.

Yet through data manipulation and a somewhat laissez-faire approach to achieving experimental consistency, many of the ancient “measurements” seem to have gone too far simply to prove that men have larger, stronger brains than women.

While the truth is much more complex, and even with modern medicine as it is today, we still cannot find a satisfactory answer.

The conundrum remains unsolved

Não đàn ông và phụ nữ có gì khác nhau? - 2 — The human brain is considered a masterpiece of nature, containing untapped thinking and cognitive power (Photo: Getty).

In the age of EEGs, PET/CT scans, and MRIs, a great deal of scientific effort has been devoted to uncovering the anatomical and functional differences in the brains of both sexes.

Although there are quite a few articles claiming to have found evidence for this, on the other hand, there are also many works that have produced different results.

In 2021, neuroscientist Lise Eliot, in a project she led, completely disproved the idea of sexual dimorphism in the human brain. This study showed that although men do have larger brains on average, this has no effect on individual thinking or cognition.

Similar differences can also be clearly observed in many other organs, such as hands, feet, eyes, nose, mouth... Instead of focusing on structure and innate, modern scientific research is increasingly focusing on the brain's adaptability.

Specifically, our brains physically change as they acquire new skills. However, each person has a different perception of the changes that are created.

This suggests that the differences between two individual brains may have more to do with their different experiences than biological sex.

Another issue that is less discussed when comparing brains is their vulnerability to psychological and neurological disorders. One example of this is autism, which was once thought to be a disease that almost exclusively affects men.

However, recently, scientists have found evidence that autism also occurs in women and girls, of many different ages.

More complex than any other structure in the universe, the human brain is a masterpiece of nature containing untapped powers of thought and perception.

Currently, the scientific community has made significant progress in decoding the complex structure of the brain, but that still seems to be not enough to explore this entire miniature "universe".

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