Brain size is more important than gender

The results of the three-year study, scientists at the University of California, Riverside and University of Florida, Gainesville, are contrary to the prevailing view that women have better language skills than men. .

In the study of 200 college students participating, the scientists found that boys and girls perform at the same level in language tests as well as reading skills. Differences in brain structure between men and women are probably due to differences in brain size for each gender.

Christine Chiarello, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, said: 'People still say women have a greater language area in the brain than men. But through our language tests, women do not give higher results than men at any test.

When it comes to differences in the size of the brain hemisphere in men and women, there are some differences in the size of the brain between the regions. While there are differences between men and women, those differences are minimal compared to the large number of individual differences in the sexes'.

The study 'New important size: Brain volume affecting neurologic sex differences' has recently been published in Cerebral Cortex.

The difference in brain size explains the majority of changes in the brain structure that at first glance seem to depend on sex.(Photo: witte-consulting.com)

Researchers collected demographic data, conducted reading skills and language skills, and used magnet resonance images to map the brain structure of 100 girls and 100 male students. . Boys and girls are similar in age, education level as well as right-handed and left-handed students.

According to Chiarello, there are major individual differences in brain structure, brain size, language processing area and speech. For most people, language and speech are processed in the left hemisphere.

According to Chiarello, differences in brain size explain the majority of changes in brain structure that at first glance seem to depend on sex. In general, the men 's brains involved in the study were about 13% larger than women' s.

Men and women 'face similar cognitive challenges using different sized neurological structures'. The study results imply that 'any gender-specific form of change in brain size is generally unrelated to the relatively large differences in the size of different brain regions.'

'In this respect, research results indicate that brain size is more important than gender'.

The co-authors of the study include: Chiarello; Christiana M. Leonard and Stephen Towler of Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Research Institute - Florida University; graduate students from the University of California, Riverside: Suzanne Welcome, Laura K. Halderman; Ron Otto is a center of computer diagnostic imaging (Riverside), and Mark A. Eckert of the University of Northern California Medical School.