期刊
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
卷 112, 期 50, 页码 15468-15473出版社
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1509654112
关键词
gender differences; sex differences; brain structure; brain connectivity; behavior
资金
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [P01-HD31921]
- Swiss National Science Foundation [320030-120661, 320030B-138668, 20030B-138668, 4-62341-05]
- European Union Future and Emerging Technologies Integrated Project Presence: Research Encompassing Sensory Enhancement, Neuroscience, Cerebral-Computer Interfaces and Application (PRESENCCIA) [27731]
Whereas a categorical difference in the genitals has always been acknowledged, the question of how far these categories extend into human biology is still not resolved. Documented sex/gender differences in the brain are often taken as support of a sexually dimorphic view of human brains (female brain or male brain). However, such a distinction would be possible only if sex/gender differences in brain features were highly dimorphic (i.e., little overlap between the forms of these features in males and females) and internally consistent (i.e., a brain has only male or only female features). Here, analysis of MRIs of more than 1,400 human brains from four datasets reveals extensive overlap between the distributions of females and males for all gray matter, whitematter, and connections assessed. Moreover, analyses of internal consistency reveal that brains with features that are consistently at one end of the maleness-femaleness continuum are rare. Rather, most brains are comprised of unique mosaics of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our findings are robust across sample, age, type of MRI, and method of analysis. These findings are corroborated by a similar analysis of personality traits, attitudes, interests, and behaviors of more than 5,500 individuals, which reveals that internal consistency is extremely rare. Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain.
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