Artificial intelligence reveals the difference between the brains of men and women

Artificial intelligence reveals the difference between the brains of men and women

Relationship columnists and popular psychologists have long claimed that men and women are wired differently, and a new study from Stanford University has proven their belief true.

Scientists developed an artificial intelligence model that was able to distinguish between brain activity scans in men and women with more than 90% accuracy.

Most of these differences are in the default mode network, striatum and limbic network – areas involved in a wide range of processes including daydreaming, remembering the past, planning the future, making decisions and smelling.

Biological sex

With these findings, scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine also add a new piece to the puzzle, supporting the idea that biological sex shapes the brain.

The researchers said they are optimistic that this work will help shed light on brain conditions that affect men and women differently. For example, autism and Parkinson's disease are more common in men, while multiple sclerosis and depression are more common in women.

Better understanding of neurological disorders

For his part, lead study researcher Vinod Menon, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, said: “The main motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, aging and the emergence of psychological and neurological disorders.”

“Identifying consistent and reproducible sex differences in the brain of healthy adults is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders,” he added.

Classification as male or female

To explore the issue of sex-specific brain differences, Menon and his team developed a deep neural network model that can learn to classify brain scans as male or female.

The researchers began by showing the AI ​​a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans and telling it whether it was looking at a male or female brain.

Through this process, the parts of the brain that show subtle differences depending on gender have been identified.

90% accuracy

When the AI ​​was fed about 1500 brain scans from a different group than the one it was trained on, it succeeded in predicting the gender of the brain's owner more than 90% of the time.

The brain scans came from men and women in the United States and Europe, suggesting that an AI model can discriminate on the basis of gender even when there are other differences, such as language, diet and culture.

“This is very strong evidence that sex is a powerful determinant of human brain organization,” Menon said, noting that one of the key differences between the current AI model and others like it is that it is “explainable.” The team of researchers was able to deduce which parts of the brain are most important for artificial intelligence to determine a person's gender.

Laboratory test of cognition

Beyond distinguishing between the brains of men and women, scientists tried to see if they could use the scans to predict how well someone would perform on a laboratory test of cognition.

The researchers also found that there is no single model of artificial intelligence that can predict the performance of everyone, but rather it is possible to predict the performance of each of them separately, and neither model can predict both of them, which means that the characteristics, which differ between males and females, have different effects on behavior depending on Sex.

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