Stanford study confirms men and women's brains function differently: 'Sex plays a crucial role'

Men and women have "distinct brain organization patterns" according to a new Stanford Medicine study.

The findings were published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" journal on Tuesday. According to Stanford Medicine’s statement on the study, it was conducted utilizing a new artificial intelligence model to scan around 1,500 brains. The AI was then instructed to determine whether the brain scan came from a man or a woman, predicting correctly with a 90% accuracy rate.

"A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders," Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, said. 

The study's author, Vinod Menon, suggested his new artificial intelligence model could be used to analyze connections between the brain and behavior. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

He added, "Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders."

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Specifically, the AI model targeted "hotspots" in the default mode network, a brain system that helps process self-referential information, the striatum, which focuses on responding to rewards, and the limbic network, which regulates emotions.

The study also developed models that analyzed whether behaviors could be predicted based on sex-based differences within the brain. The team then branched out into sex-specific models that were able to effectively predict men or women’s cognitive performance based on brain scans.

"These models worked really well because we successfully separated brain patterns between sexes," Menon said. "That tells me that overlooking sex differences in brain organization could lead us to miss key factors underlying neuropsychiatric disorders."

A Stanford study developed an AI model that correctly guessed male and female brains based on "hotspots." (iStock)

Menon has said that he and his team plan to make the model publicly available to other researchers, noting that it can be used to study any form of connection between brain activity and outward behavior.

"Our AI models have very broad applicability," Menon said. "A researcher could use our models to look for brain differences linked to learning impairments or social functioning differences, for instance — aspects we are keen to understand better to aid individuals in adapting to and surmounting these challenges."

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The study contradicted recent efforts to assert there are little to no biological differences between men and women, especially in defense of transgender athletes competing on girls’ sports teams. ‌

Dr. Gina Rippon, author of "Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience that Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain," downplayed the study requests and questioned whether the differences found in the AI model came from biological or social factors.

Activists have suggested that there are no biological differences between men and women. (Fox News Digital)

‌"The key issue is whether these differences are a product of sex-specific, biological influences, or of brain-changing gendered experiences. Or both. Are we really looking at sex differences? Or gender differences?" Rippon told The Telegraph. "Or, acknowledging that almost all brain–shaping factors are dynamically entangled products of both sex and gender influences, are we looking at what should be called sex/gender differences?"

Fox News Digital reached out to Stanford Medicine for comment but has yet to receive a response.

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