Research Paper Example: Similarities and Differences Between Men and Women's Brains

How men and women's brains work. Do they work the same, or do they work vastly differently from each other? This has been a big question in psychology, how do men and women's brains work. We often always hear people saying, “oh well, I am a man, so I think/ do stuff differently because my brain works different.” Well let us dig deeper into phycology and find out if this is true or not.  

On average every male and female's brains are different. Womens brains averagely have eleven percent more cells in the area that processes auditory information. Women can also have larger parts of frontal lobes relative to the overall size of the brain. Some parts of the parietal cortex and the amygdala are larger in men. Women often have more cortical folds in the frontal and parietal lobes. According to new research from (Two Minds the Cognitive Differences between Men and Women, n.d.). “You see sex differences in spatial-visualization ability in 2- and 3-month-old infants,” Halpern says. “Infant girls respond more readily to faces and begin talking earlier. Boys react earlier in infancy to experimentally induced perceptual discrepancies in their visual environment. In adulthood, women remain more oriented to faces, men to things.” On tasks involving language, men often rely on one side of the brain, and women tend to use both sides. Women are twice as likely as men to experience clinical depression in their lifetimes, likewise for post-traumatic stress disorder. “Men are twice as likely to become alcoholic or drug-dependent, and 40 percent more likely to develop schizophrenia. Boys’ dyslexia rate is perhaps 10 times that of girls, and they’re four or five times as likely to get a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.” said from, (Two Minds The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women, n.d.). - a woman’s hippo­campus, critical to learning and memorization, is larger than a man’s and works differently. Conversely, a man’s amygdala, -  associated with the experiencing of emotions and the recollection of such experiences, is bigger than a woman’s. Women on average have a greater verbal ability then men. Women often use rapport building language when speaking and men usually use reporting language, which describes and explains things. The most oft-repeated claims about regional brain differences between men and women concern subcortical structures, which have been examined using MRI since the mid-1990s. Women complement one another more than men do. Yet there are no differences in men and women and their abilities to answer questions. Men, on average, can more easily juggle items in working memory. They have superior visuospatial skills: “They are better at visualizing what happens when a complicated two- or three-dimensional shape is rotated in space, at correctly determining angles from the horizontal, at tracking moving objects and at aiming projectiles.” according to, (Two Minds The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women, n.d.). Also, the environment you grow up in can shape and have a significant impact on your neurology, your behavior can also affect your environment, and your choice of profession can affect your neurology. The most obvious difference between male and female brains is in overall mass or volume. -  

 Here is a quote from a researcher, “We do not know if the sex differences we found are because of the way we were raised or if it is hardwired in the brain.” A study done on men and women who have equivalent IQ’s show that women's brains have more white matter of intelligence, whereas men's brains have more gray areas of intelligence.  

Although there is shown differences in men and women brains some doctors say it's not the gender or sex of the brain at all, it’s the size. Dr. Eliot said. "Sex differences in the brain are tiny and inconsistent, once individuals' head size is accounted for." (Massive Study Reveals Few Differences between Men’s and Women’s Brains: Neuroscientists Conduct Meta-Synthesis of Three Decades of Research, 2021). There are also some studies showing that there are differences between men and women's brains and it's because of the genders. Said from (Two Minds The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women, n.d.). “The neuroscience literature shows that the human brain is a sex-typed organ with distinct anatomical differences in neural structures and accompanying physiological differences in function.” 

If a person's body is bigger than its brain is going to be bigger, but 12 percent of men's brains are larger than women, when they are the same body size. “Recognizing that brain size is related to body size and that human bodies are indeed sexually dimorphic, neuroscientists have struggled to find ways of comparing brain structures between men and women that don’t merely reflect bodily size differences. Thus, every major study confirms that it is not only global measures like ICV, TBV, total GM, total WM and CSF volume that are larger in males.” (Dump the Âdimorphismâ: Comprehensive Synthesis of Human Brain Studies Reveals Few Male-Female Differences beyond Size, 2021). 

Back to our original question “why or how do men and women's brains work differently.” Here is some information from (Two Minds the Cognitive Differences between Men and Women, n.d.). “One big reason is that, for much of their lifetimes, women and men have different fuel additives running through their tanks: the sex-steroid hormones. In female mammals, the primary additives are a few members of the set of molecules called estrogens, along with another molecule called progesterone; and in males, testosterone and a few look-alikes collectively deemed androgens.” Importantly, males developing normally in utero get hit with a big mid-gestation surge of testosterone, permanently shaping not only their body parts and proportions but also their brains.  

To answer our question “do men and women brains work differently” the answer is yes, the brains do work differently in many ways, although we do not know if it is a gender different or because of how much smaller most women's brain is. But what we do know is there is a difference between men and women's brains. 

References  

Two minds the cognitive differences between men and women. (n.d.). Stanford Medicine. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html# 

Massive study reveals few differences between men’s and women’s brains: Neuroscientists conduct meta-synthesis of three decades of research. (2021, March 29). ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325115316.htm 

Dump the âdimorphismâ: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size. (2021, June 1). ScienceDirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763421000804?via%3Dihub.