Friday, February 12, 2016

Neurological/Behavioral Differences Between Men and Women

An image-based study was performed by a team in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine that aimed to develop a structural connectome of people's brains, highlighting the differences between male and female brains.

"The team's findings build on a 2013 Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study in which they found, on average, differences in the neural wiring of men and women. This latest study delves deeper, reporting that differences in the behaviors of men and women are accompanied by related differences in the brain subnetworks. According to findings of the team, stronger structural connectivity in motor, sensory, and executive functions matched higher motor and spatial skills in males. In females, subnetworks associated with social cognition, attention and memory tasks had higher connectivity and matched improved memory and social cognition skills."

More broadly, this is part of an ever-growing field of medicine called "precision medicine" which aims to give personalized treatment to patients, given the fact that three different patients may react in three different ways to the same disease. 


Article by Science Daily here
Original published study on the The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B here.
Reference: Published online before print January 18, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1359105315623627
J Health Psychol January 18, 2016 1359105315623627

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