By Tanya Lewis, Business Insider, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Dec. 2, 2015 – For centuries, people have clung to the belief that there’s something inherently different between the male brain and the female brain.
But in a new study, scientists combed through the brain scans of more than 1,400 people, and found that while there are some distinct brain differences between men and women, there’s no such thing as a distinctly “male” or “female” brain.
“Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
‘Male’ and ‘female’ brains
It has long been assumed that men and women have different brains.
And some previous research had supported that notion, finding some differences in the structure of male and female brains. A 2014 study of 949 people found that men’s brains had more connections within each brain hemisphere, whereas women’s brains had more between connections between hemispheres.
But other research had defied the notion that human brains can be divided into simple “male” and “female” categories.
To get at an answer, Daphna Joel, a psychologist at Israel’s Tel-Aviv University, and her colleagues analyzed MRIs scans from four separate studies comprising a total of more than 1,400 people.
