4 Dec 2013

Male and female brain stereotypes found to be true

6:40 am on 4 December 2013

A new study of the male and female brain has found some of the traditional stereotypes about the differences between the way men and women think are true.

Men are wired to read a map, while women are better equipped for multi-tasking and asking for directions.

Drawing on about 1000 brain scans, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found women's brains have a greater degree of connectivity between the left and right hemispheres.

Men's brains, by contrast, are linked from front to back, to facilitate perception and coordinated action.

The researchers found the gender differences seem to develop during adolescence.

But the BBC reports that experts have questioned whether it can be that simple, arguing it is a huge leap to extrapolate from anatomical differences to try to explain behavioural variation between the sexes.

Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg, an expert in neuroscience at the University of Oxford, said the brain was too complex an organ to be able to make broad generalisations.