Men and Women Think Differently: Female Brain is Better at Multitasking

It turns out that men and women may just experience different brain activity. A new brain connectivity study has shown that there are striking differences in the neural wiring of men and women. The findings reveal that women are better at multitasking while men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand.

In order to examine these brain connections, though, the researchers investigated the gender-specific differences in brain connectivity during the course of development in 949 individuals. This included 521 females and 428 males who were aged 8 to 22 years. The scientists employed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is a water-based imaging technique that can trace and highlight the fiber pathways connecting the different regions of the brain. This can lay the foundation for a structural connectome or network of the whole brain.

The brain itself is a roadmap of neural pathways linking many networks that help us process information and reaction accordingly. Behavior is controlled by several of these sub-networks working in conjunction. Yet during the course of the study, the scientists found that there were a few stark differences between male and female brains.

It turns out that females displayed greater connectivity in the supratentorial region, which contains the cerebrum, the largest part of the brain, between the left and right hemispheres. Males, in contrast, displayed greater connectivity within each hemisphere. The opposite was true in the cerebellum, though; this part of the brain plays a major role in motor control. Males displayed greater inter-hemispheric connectivity while females displayed greater intra-hemispheric connectivity.

So what does this mean? On average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions. Women, however, have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group.

"It's quite striking how complementary the brains of women and men really are," said Ruben Gur, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Detailed connectome maps of the brain will not only help us better understand the differences between how men and women think, but it will also give us more insight into the roots of neurological disorders, which are often sex related."

The findings reveal a little bit more about how men and women differ in not only how they think, but also their behavior. The next steps are to quantify how an individual's neural connections are different from the population, identify which neural connections are gender specific and common in both and to see if findings from fMRI studies fall in line with the connectome data.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.