Even with modern medicine today, we still cannot find a satisfactory answer to the differences of the human brain (Photo: Getty).
We know that men are generally larger in appearance, larger in stature, and taller than women. But what about the internal organs, typically the brain?
The question of whether there are tangible differences between male and female brains is actually one of the most fascinating, and controversial, questions in the history of neuroscience .
Along with that are related questions such as: Are men's brains bigger or women's brains bigger? Do men's or women's brains have more neurons...
From a historical perspective
The idea that there is something fundamentally different between male and female brains has actually been around since the 19th century.
The idea of comparing male and female brains marks the rise of the feminist, anti-monopoly movement and the overwhelmingly male influence, says cognitive neuroscientist Gina Rippon.
The idea of comparing brains was simple then: A bigger brain meant higher intelligence.
Yet through data falsification and a somewhat laissez-faire approach to achieving experimental consistency, many ancient “measurements” seem to have gone too far simply to prove that men have larger, stronger brains than women.
While the truth is much more complex, and even with modern medicine as it is today, we still cannot find a satisfactory answer.
The conundrum remains unsolved
The human brain is considered a masterpiece of nature, containing untapped power of thinking and perception (Photo: Getty).
In the age of EEGs, PET/CT scans, and MRIs, a great deal of scientific effort has been devoted to finding out the anatomical and functional differences in the brains of both sexes.
Although there are many articles claiming to have found evidence for this, on the other hand, there are also many works that show different results.
In 2021, neuroscientist Lise Eliot, in a project she led, completely disproved the idea of sexual dimorphism in the human brain. This study showed that although men do have larger brains on average, this has no effect on individual thinking or cognition.
Similar differences can also be clearly observed in many other organs, such as hands, feet, eyes, nose, mouth... Instead of focusing on structure and innateness, modern scientific research is increasingly focusing on the brain's adaptability.
Specifically, our brains physically change as they acquire new skills. However, each person has a different perception of the changes that are created.
This suggests that the differences between two individual brains may have more to do with their different experiences than biological sex.
Another issue that is rarely discussed when comparing brains is their vulnerability to psychological and neurological disorders. One example of this is autism, which was once thought to affect almost exclusively males.
However, recently, scientists have found evidence that autism also occurs in women and girls, of many different ages.
More complex than any structure in the universe, the human brain is a masterpiece of nature containing untapped powers of thought and perception.
Currently, scientists have made significant progress in decoding the complex structure of the brain, but that still seems to be not enough to explore this entire miniature "universe".
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