How Do Male and Female Brains Differ?

Summary

The human brain is incredibly complex and the best minds are trying to find out how it works so that computers can simulate it. We have a long way to go. A few basic facts:

• The male brain weighs around 1.4kg, about 2% of body weight. Although the male brain is 10% larger than the female brain, it does not impact intelligence! All in proportion. Similarly in the animal kingdom.
• There are more similarities than differences between male and female brains. Different parts of the brain are larger or smaller in men and women; this is where there are differences. Men tend to excel at focused projects, like maths, estimating time, judging speed, etc., while women are more likely to excel at language and multitasking. With children, women have had to multitask forever! See also ‘Male/Female Differences: Strengths and Weaknesses’ below.
• The brain has about 86Bn neurons, grey (matter) colour only when dead, pinkish in life. About the same number of cells insulate neurons with a sheath allowing electrical and chemical impulses to flow between neurons. They look white so are called white matter. Neurons are connected by something like 850,000 km of fibres called axons (the transmission network) and dendrites (receivers). I said it was complex! Below is more detail.

The video below briefly describes how the brain works.

Neurons

Neurons (or nerve cells) receive input from the external world, send commands to our muscles, transform and relay electrical signals in between.

Synapses

Synapses are the engine room of the brain and are signals to take some physical action, think, etc., They are mainly chemical, but some are electrical. Brain activity shows up in colours using monitors. All the brain is active all the time when we are conscious. The number of synapses is enormous and could be between 86 billion to 17 trillion synapses a second.

Structure of the Human Brain

The diagram below shows the brain’s components.

The left diagram above is a cross section of the human brain and on the right, the main areas of the brain called lobes. To see the functions of each component or lobe, go to the John Hopkins Medicine or Web MD references below.

How Close Are We?

Christof Koch, PhD, Chief Scientist and President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, said in 2019, “We don’t even understand the brain of a worm.” A worm has 302 neurons, we have 86Bn! Fortunately, Barrack Obama set up a $100M brain initiative (see ‘References‘ below) and with the increasing power of computing and storage, we might progress more rapidly.

Male/Female Differences: Strengths and Weaknesses

See Psychology Today under ‘References‘.

The following are generalisations and no doubt most of you will think of exceptions.

There are varying opinions from experts about the differences, some believing there is virtually no difference but to the layman, these differences are obvious. For instance, women are good at maintaining friendships and telephoning each other, whereas men generally just call to make arrangements! Our very young grandkids naturally gravitate to weapons (boys) or dolls (girls) without long term consequences (personal observations).

• Men are better at performing single tasks; women at multitasking.
• Women are better at attention, word memory, social cognition and verbal abilities.
• Men are better at spatial processing and sensorimotor speed.
• Women are better at fine motor coordination and retrieving information from long term memory
• Women are more oriented toward and have better memories of faces, men of things.
• Men are better at visualizing a two or three dimensional shape rotated in space, correctly determining angles from the horizontal, tracking moving objects, and aiming projectiles.
• In finding their way, men rely more on dead reckoning. They determine their position from the direction and distance travelled. Women tend to rely more on landmarks.

Conclusion

Some say the human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, but we don’t know everything about the universe. However, the brain is mind bogglingly complex!

The futurist and Google chief engineer, Ray Kurzweil predicted 15 years ago that the singularity – when a computer overtakes the human brain—will occur in about 2045. Some now believe this event may be earlier, once quantum computing is developed. See the detail in the references below.

To discuss or if you have questions on this subject, comment below. Answers will be posted there and emailed to you.

References

• Health Beat
• Live Science
• Obama Brain Initiative
• John Hopkins Medicine
• Web MD
• Stanford Med
• Psychology Today

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