Studies on the brains of men and women rain down every year. Until then, it was thought, for example, that women had better attention, better memory for words and faces and greater social intelligence. Men, they would have a better facility to process visual information, according to a 2013 study. But above all, it was thought that there was an anatomical difference between the male and female brain. That of the woman would indeed have a much more developed hippocampus, explaining their supposed better processing of emotions. Except that, in this field, the studies follow each other and do not resemble each other. The latest has just been carried out by researchers at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (USA). She shows that these brain differences linked to gender would in fact not exist... almost not.
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The results published in the scientific journal NeuroImage show no signs of that. And to reach this conclusion, the scientists sifted through the brains of 6,000 men and women – of different ages and social situations – using high-tech techniques and medical imaging. For them, no doubt, there is no significant difference between men and women in terms of brain structure. And the famous size of the hippocampus, which was believed to be larger in women, would actually vary according to individuals, and not their sex! “The anatomical differences between men and women are often used to justify anachronistic prejudices,” explained Lise Eliot, professor of neurology and one of the researchers of the study. And to conclude:"In reality, at the level of the brain in any case, these differences are really minimal. Beware of scientific pseudo-studies that only involve 15 or 20 volunteers:they are misleading. We have been warned!
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