Why Men Are from Mars and Women from Venus: Synapses Separate the Way They Think

Javier DeFelipe from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain, together with his team, led a study on brain, which helped indicate the fact that differences in thinking between the two genders come from the synapses.

As they say, the variations in synapse density is a factor that attests the different way men and women think. Synapses are neural junctions between axons and dendrites that neurons use in order to communicate between them. Children are estimated to have around 10¹⁶ synapses, but the number reduces in time, reaching amounts between 10¹⁴ and 5 × 10¹⁴ (100-500 trillion) in adulthood.

Up to now, reasons for the cognitive differences between sexes, such as certain adult hormones or social ethics, were supposed to be common knowledge, as was the similar construction and functionality of the brain. Recent studies, however, revealed that the genetic blueprints men and women are built from are seemingly different, which leads to the obvious anatomical differences, brain included.

So, even though the level of intelligence may be the same, each of the two genders performs better in other tasks. This does not include maths, however, like it was believed, as a study led by Paola Sapienza from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois demonstrated that the respective skill was rather related to gender equality. Another myth that has been destroyed is the one stating that neuron density and brain size influence cognition.

DeFelipe and his colleagues chose to compute the synapse number in the healthy tissue extracted from the left temporal cortex of four men and four women suffering from epilepsy. This specific region of the brain is used for social and emotional processing. As a result, men's synaptic level in each brain "layer" surpassed women's by a stunning 52%. The real effect of such a high synaptic level in this area is still uncertain, but the researchers are confident that women may prevail in synapse number in some other brain areas. DeFelipe warns us not to get overconfident, though, as mice have greater synapse density than we do.