Functional And Behavioral Changes Essay

What differences are known to exist between male and female brains?   In adults, the average brain weight in men is about 11-12% more than the average brain weight in women. Men’s heads are also about 2% bigger than women’s. This is due to the larger physical stature of men. Male’s larger muscle mass and larger body-size requires more neurons to control them.
Men have 4% more brain cells than women, and about 100 grams more of brain tissue. This may explain why women are more prone to dimentia (such as Alzheimer’s disease) than men, although both may lose the same number of neurons due to the disease, the   functional reserve in males may be greater, as a larger number of nerve cells are present.
While men have more neurons in the cerebral cortex, women have a more developed neuropil (the space between cell bodies) which contains synapses, dendrites and axons, and allows for communication among neurons.
Women’s brains have a larger corpus collosum, which means women can transfer data between the right and left- hemispheres faster than men. Men tend to be more left brained, while women have greater access to both sides.
The volume of a specific nucleus in the hypothalamus is twice as large in men then it is in women.
Two areas in the frontal and temporal lobes related to language are significantly larger in women, thus providing a biological reason for women’s notorious superiority in language-associated abilities.
A region in the cortex of the brain, known as the Inferior parietal lobule (IPL), is significantly larger in men than in women. The left IPL is involved with perception of time and speed, and the ability to rotate three-dimentional figures. The right IPL is involved with understanding and manipulating spatial relationships.
The orbitofrontal cortex,( a region involved in regulating emotions, and compared to the size of the amygdale, implicated more in producing emotional reactions), are found to be significantly larger in women than in men....