New research has not only affirmed, but added fuel to the "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" debate -a saying that speaks to the difference in the ways both sexes operates, the Daily Mail reported.
A new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania suggest that the female brain is "hard-wired" to be better at multi-tasking, while men's' brains are better at concentrating on a single complex task.
Drawing from more than 900 brain scans of young men and women, researchers concluded that the differences come down to the way neural connections are made in the brain. Researchers found women have far better connections between the left and right sides of the brain, while men had more intense activity within the brain's individual parts including the cerebellum which controls motor skills.
"The research shows that if women and men are given a task that involves both logical thinking and intuitive thinking, women will do it better - they are better at connecting the left and the right sides of the brain," Dr. Ragini Verma, who carried out the study with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Daily Mail.
However, researchers also found that men have better connections between the front and back of the brain; this gives them a better ability to quickly perceive information and use it immediately to carry out complex tasks.
"If you have an instant action to be performed and you need to do it now, male brains are more attuned to it because the front-back action is more intensely connected," Verma said.
This means men are better at things such as parking a car or leaning to swim, while women are batter at remembering a face, according to the Daily Mail.
"If you had to do a task like remembering a face, picking somebody out in a party, that would require you to connect several parts of the brain. 'Where did I see that face last, what do I see in this person, do I remember this person from somewhere?'" Verma said, "That requires the connection of various sub-networks in the brain - something women are better able to do."
She added that "individuals will differ, always... But we said, if you take 1,000 people and analyze the data statistically, what would the male brain look like and what would the female brain look like?"
This is one of the largest studies to look at how healthy male and female brains are wired.
Beyond better understanding the neurological differences between men and women, scientists hope the same scans can provide insight into how connectivity abnormalities could affect brain disorders.
