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You may have read that having a male brain will earn you more money. Or maybe that female brains are better at multitasking. But there is no such thing as a female or male brain, according to the first search for sex differences across the entire human brain. It reveals that most people have a mix of male and female brain features. And it also supports the idea that gender is non-binary, and that gender classifications in many situations are meaningless.
“This evidence that human brains cannot be categorised into two distinct classes is new, convincing, and somehow radical,” says Anelis Kaiser at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
The idea that people have either a “female” or “male” brain is an old one, says Daphna Joel at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “The theory goes that once a fetus develops testicles, they secrete testosterone which masculinises the brain,” she says. “If that were true, there would be two types of brain.”
Despite persisting stereotypes, girls are no worse than boys at science and maths subjects, either.
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“People get wedded to the idea that being male or female is highly predictive of having different aptitudes or career choices,” says Margaret McCarthy, who studies brain sex differences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “This study fights against the idea that these outcomes are based on biological differences, as opposed to cultural expectations.” Other body systems are also often wrongly considered to be either male or female, says Joel.
Read full, original post: Scans prove there’s no such thing as a ‘male’ or ‘female’ brain
