Written by:
ALLISON BUSKE DPT, PT, CBIS
Allison can be reached at allison@apexptwellness.com
I attended a conference a few years ago and one thing that stuck with me was the difference between male and female brains!
Men’s brains are compartmentalized. They are like waffles. All their tasks and thoughts stay in the compartment, and they are easily able to move to one compartment to another but have a harder time multitasking.
Woman’s brains are like cooked spaghetti, all the information processed is mixed, jumbled and can correlate together and move between ideas quickly.
Let’s take a closer look at some differences that scientists have found between male and female brains!
Let’s start at the very beginning:
Scientists research have studied humans (and animals) and found that differences can be seen starting at infancy. Spatial-visualization can start as young as 2-3 months old. Girls start to talk earlier and can respond to faces. This carries over to women in their adulthood as they are more orientated to faces. Boy infants tend to gravitate to their visual environment, and this carries into adulthood as they orientate to things.
Check out this chart of strengths and weaknesses of Male and Female’s brain anatomy
So why the changes?
The changes have to do a lot with hormones and chromosomal make up. When in utero, girls receive more estrogen and men testosterone. This hormone surge, shapes the difference in sizes of areas of the brain (amygdala-emotions/behaviors and hippocampus-learning and memory).
Let’s get to the research on “waffles” and “spaghetti”
Woman’s brains have been studied and the spaghetti analogy is found to be true! Woman’s two hemispheres of the brain talk to each other more than men’s do. In a university of Pennsylvania study in 2014, found that female brains consistently show more activity between the two sides. Female brains have a larger corpus callosum (the cable track that connects both sides of the brain). Male brains are found to use more local brain regions (waffles).
It is amazing how we are all created and made! The more we learn, the more we grow! Now we can celebrate our differences and be thankful for our functioning brains that run our bodies.
If you would like more information on the research and findings check out the website below:
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different.html
