The brain is about 1.5 kg in weight that’s 6 pounds and its use is clear to even children. It has been described as the computer of the human body but it does computing and much more. It interprets the external environment into judgeable features that allow for actions with the action itself being controlled by the brain. It 3 parts (cerebrum, cerebellum, and brainstem) are housed within the skull.
The cerebrum is the biggest of the brain's parts and has 2 halves forming a globe. We will be concentrating mostly on this part of the brain for most of this post.
The cerebral hemispheres are divided into four lobes. These are the frontal, the temporal, the parietal and the occipital.
Researchers have been able to divide each of these lobes based on their functions too.
Many things are the same in the male brain and the female brain, in fact, many would argue that they are more alike than they are different. Noticing the differences in these structures may be more beneficial in understanding the risk for certain neuropsychiatry diseases like depression that disproportionately affect women more than it affects men. Then autism (a neurodevelopmental disorder) typically affects men more than it affects women.
Grossly speaking the male brain is 10% larger. So far in my experience and medical literature, what we know is that facial recognition in women is more developed even from infancy. I remember as a child then girls were more observant of what parents were doing and now as an adult if you keeping a threatening facial expression is enough to deter some baby girls from making some actions. But my nephews will laugh at you and continue to climb whatever structure they had in mind..that’s if they even pay attention to your face at all. Prof. Jordan B Peterson noted this in his book: 12 rules for life.
In this post, we have noted the analysis done by the National Institute of Mental Health. Several have been done that highlighted volume differences in certain areas peculiar to the different sexes. Older studies believe these differences were due to the hormonal interplay that goes on differently in male and female bodies but recent studies have found genetic differences. The cells of a male sex chromosome denoted as XY is seen in every cell of the human body. The cells denoted as XX for female are also seen in every cell f the human body. These chromosomes code for different structures in the body that make us particularly different.
The data was gathered from 2 different databanks. One had data from 967 healthy people while the second had data from 1,120 healthy people. The age range was between 20 to 50 years. The information was then published in 2020.
On average, males and females showed greater volume in different areas of the cortex, the outer brain layer that controls thinking and voluntary movements. Females had greater volume in the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, lateral parietal cortex, and insula. Males, on average, had greater volume in the ventral temporal and occipital regions. Each of these regions is responsible for processing different types of information.
The main part of the brain that showed more significant differences was the cerebral cortex. This is the seat of thought and voluntary actions. Isn’t that noteworthy? The differences between men and women could be traced down to their thoughts and actions on an organic level.
The female brain had a bigger volume in the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, lateral parietal cortex, and insula. Males, on average, had greater volume in the ventral temporal and occipital regions.
These parts of the brain process different types of information.
They made use of gene expression maps to properly understand the data they were analyzing. The maps provided were organized data from 1,300 studies done on postmortem histology from 6 humans. Comparing that study to the data available confirmed the volume differences in males and females.
Medical illustrations by Storyset
Research work moved to compare 11,000 neuroimaging studies done in the past. Among the 50 studies done, the ones that stood out the most were those done on facial processing.
Other than this difference, not much has been outlined as a clear difference.
Another article I read explains how the lob that is larger in men is the inferior parietal lobe, and this part of the brain explains why men have better maths skills and are better at deducing speed. However, the article made no reference to the study, or the study method nor did the article have a date…so I couldn’t take it seriously.
