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01st Dec 2015

Study Shows There’s No Such Thing As ‘Male’ And ‘Female’ Brains

Ellen Tannam

Many people still think that men and women have completely different brains (all those stereotypes about women being better at multitasking and men being good at logical problems come to mind), but this recent research is something to think about.

The first study to look at sex differences in the brain has shown that there’s barely any division or difference in the makeup of the brains of male and female individuals. Screen-shot-2013-12-11-at-2.45.56-PM-300x267

Your brain makeup doesn’t have much to do with your gender as it turns out.

Scientists at Tel-Aviv University scanned the brains of 1400 people of mixed gender and found that although some features appear more in men than in women and vice versa, most people actually have a ‘mosaic’ like brain makeup with a lot of different traits.

Psychologist Daphna Joel told The Guardian: “What we show is that there are multiple ways to be male and female, there is not one way, and most of these ways are completely overlapping.” 

Prof-Dafna-Yoel-1-1024x482Professor Daphna Joel (Source- Jewish Business News)

The scientists found that people who had more ‘consistent’ brains ranked the lowest from zero to 8% and those with a mixture of features ranged from 23-53% of participants.

Joel added: ‘We show there are differences, but brains do not come in male and female forms. The differences you see are differences between averages. Each one of us is a unique mosaic.’

However neuroscientist Larry Cahil said not to rule out some sex-based differences in brains, even if we are not sure how these work. (The Independent)

(Featured Image: National Geographic)