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Women's Brains Are 'Four Years Younger' Than Men's, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
Women's brains are nearly four years younger than men's, at least in how they burn fuel, according to scans performed by U.S. researchers. "Scientists found that healthy women have a 'metabolic brain age' that is persistently younger than men's of the same chronological age," reports The Guardian. "The difference is apparent from early adulthood and remains into old age." From the report: The finding suggests that changes in how the brain uses energy over a person's lifetime proceed more gradually in women than they do in men. While researchers are unsure of the medical consequences, it may help explain why women tend to stay mentally sharp for longer. "Brain metabolism changes with age but what we noticed is that a good deal of the variation we see is down to sex differences," said Marcus Raichle, a neurobiologist at Washington University school of medicine in St Louis. "If you look at how brain metabolism predicts a person's age, women come out looking about four years younger than they are."
The scientists used a brain scanning technique called positron emission tomography to measure the flow of oxygen and glucose in the brains of 121 women and 84 men aged 20 to 82. The scans revealed how sugar was being turned into energy in different parts of the volunteers' brains. To see how brain metabolism differed between the sexes, the researchers used a computer algorithm to predict people's ages based on brain metabolism as measured by the scans. First, the scientists taught it to predict men's ages from metabolism data gleaned from the male brain scans. The striking result came when the scientists fed metabolism data from the women into the same program. While the program estimated male ages accurately, it judged the women's brains to be, on average, 3.8 years younger than their real ages. "The scientists then flipped the analysis around," the report adds. "They trained the algorithm to predict women's ages from data garnered from their brain scans. This time, when they fed metabolism data from the men into the computer, it estimated them to be 2.4 years older than they were. The way male brains burned sugar made them seem older than female ones of the same age." The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists used a brain scanning technique called positron emission tomography to measure the flow of oxygen and glucose in the brains of 121 women and 84 men aged 20 to 82. The scans revealed how sugar was being turned into energy in different parts of the volunteers' brains. To see how brain metabolism differed between the sexes, the researchers used a computer algorithm to predict people's ages based on brain metabolism as measured by the scans. First, the scientists taught it to predict men's ages from metabolism data gleaned from the male brain scans. The striking result came when the scientists fed metabolism data from the women into the same program. While the program estimated male ages accurately, it judged the women's brains to be, on average, 3.8 years younger than their real ages. "The scientists then flipped the analysis around," the report adds. "They trained the algorithm to predict women's ages from data garnered from their brain scans. This time, when they fed metabolism data from the men into the computer, it estimated them to be 2.4 years older than they were. The way male brains burned sugar made them seem older than female ones of the same age." The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...they aren't used as much. ZING!
Did they bother to include race in their study?
When i was in grade school it was explained that science was about controlling for factors.
Glucose is a type of sugar. How old is your brain?
Scientific proof that men are more mature than women!
Boobs, fart, boobs, whatever.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Doubtful. The human lifespan was never long enough for it to matter until recently. Most people were dead in their 30s.
Go to editor school already, BeauHD.
You could also say that men's brains are 'Four Years Older' than women's. So by assuming men's brain's are the reference and women's are younger I suspect you will annoy some. Just saying...
If women are so smart how come most of them end up marrying men?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Thatâ(TM)s not true at all. In time periods where the average age of death was considerably lower it was infant mortality pulling it down. Once you hit 18 it wasnâ(TM)t uncommon to make it into the 60â(TM)s.
Doubtful. The human lifespan was never long enough for it to matter until recently. Most people were dead in their 30s.
This is a myth. In earlier times, average lifespan was short because of high childhood mortality. But if you made it past 5, you were likely to live to 50, 60, or 70.
The presence of a maternal grandmother in the household is correlated with better child and maternal health. Interestingly, the presence of a paternal grandmother has an overall negative effect. So women actually have a scientific basis for hating their mother-in-law.
That is true for more "recent" times (Roman). But on the evolutionary scale timeframes I don't think that was a factor. I'm not an expert (or an iPhone user) so I might be completely wrong, but probably am 100% correct.
I should have been more specific. When I say "recently" I mean recently in evolutionary timescales. For most of history (pre-Roman, etc), humans died in their 30s, even if they made it through childhood. I sincerely doubt women raising extended family until their old age had anything to do with it.
No they did not.
For what fucked upped reason would they?
Ramses was 99 or something ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No Test for tranneys etc?
Glucose is a type of sugar. How old is your brain?
I'd like to see the average amount of sugar in stuff we buy go down. I think that can be justified, the same way we have justified limiting the exposure to chemicals that may be bad for us. Similarly, I'd like to see whole grains and such displace refined grains for the same reason. It doesn't have to be all at once, but scientifically isn't the evidence there?
Oh really? Welcome to Slashdot, where idiots dispute facts that they can easily look up.
How dare they have racist findings! How soon til theyre fired?
This is a myth. In earlier times, average lifespan was short because of high childhood mortality. But if you made it past 5, you were likely to live to 50, 60, or 70.
No, that is a myth.
From Wikipedia, in Classical Greece, "Based on Athens Agora and Corinth data, total life expectancy at 15 would be 37â"41 years"
Ramses was 99 or something ...
You're confusing longevity with life expectancy.
But that's not the statistic of interest. If we had the all the data available, the statistic of interest is the life expectancy at birth, split for only those people who bring a child into this world who also brings a child into this world.
In other words, grandparent-caliber people, with some staying power in the gene pool, who put in the long hearth years.
That group of people could quite easily have a life expectancy at birth of 50 or more years, even with the number you've quoted above.
Especially considering that it wasn't uncommon for a male child to reach adulthood, join an army, and not survive to start any family, whatsoever (who's tragic death at age 18 or 22 would be excluded from my split above).
Even though I was born a man, I feel like I should have been a woman. Therefore my brain must also be 4 years younger like all other women.
If I'm reading this right, an AI model of the male brain is being asked to interpret a female brain as a male brain, and then to predict the age of such a male brain, which comes out lower than the age of the female brain masquerading as a male brain.
AI algorithms are notorious for finding any manner of correlation. How do you correct for brain size differences (or anything else) in such a study?
However, I wouldn't discard this study outright if I were planning to undergo a cross-sex brain transplant sometime soon.
That they should not be allowed to vote until they are 22?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
No, I don't. The parent is. I just picked a prominent example.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why is that important?
Where are the woman demanding to meet/befriend/marry younger men?
Are any other factors also persistent, such as brain weight or volume?
Where's the research revealing men have superior bodies, it can't be women all the time?
This reads like an answer looking for a problem.
Every anon speaks from "the gut" because their brain is their liver and it's bloated by fructose and damaged by alcohol.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The scans revealed how sugar was being turned into energy in different parts of the volunteers' brains
Sugar ? My brain runs on beta-hydroxybutyrate, you insensitive clod.
This article utterly failed to account for trans and nonbinary! I'll pause here while you check your privilege(s). Also, I'm Vegan and do crossfit when I'm not riding my road bike in traffic.
So as a male I should get to retire earlier . It seems only fair. I must be really old because I actually learned cobol.
Pot meet kettle
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Based on the data from modern hunter-gatherer populations, it is estimated that at 15, life expectancy was an additional 39 years (total 54), with a 0.60 probability of reaching 15.
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-life-expectancy-of-humans-in-prehistoric-times
The average life span was 35 in the paleolithic, but that is taking all the life spans and adding them and dividing, that brings it down due to the high infant mortality rate, those who survived child hood usually lived to be 40 or 50
Women's brains are four years more immature than men's.
Seriously, this is one of those studies which has no real meaning whatsoever, and the spinning is just because these days its more popular to place woman as superior (the opposite spin is equally trivial).
captcha: smears
I thought women and men were identical? I thought that you could decide that you're a woman or a man and that biology had no intrinsic determination. Does identifying as a woman make you mentally four years younger? Shouldn't scientists not even be studying differences between the sexes because it is sexist to do so?
That why women are marrying or come into a relationship with younger men.
Which is why no female chess player can beat the world's best male chess player. Which is why 99% of inventions are invented by men - normally WHITE men, of course...
Something urks me about the headline - the study does not say that "the brain is older". It only says "an individual’s brain appears metabolically younger or older than it should".
If my brain really were 4 years older than my girlfriend's of equal age, how come that my my jokes a lot more immature than hers??
it's a famous saying, but now it turns out to be part of the scientific evidence for the validity of the patriarchy.
[ducks and runs for cover with a smile]
Sorry, just could not resist in the age of nasty faminists and the Gillette (all men are toxic creeps) razor ad.
And Tutankhamun died when he was about 20, so what?
A single measuring point means jack. But Wikipedia has an answer, as usual. In general it seems that our life expectancy went down sharply as we went from hunter/gatherer to a more sessile lifestyle, before it recovered slowly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Marriage ages a man at least 4 years.
He got murdered, so what?
The idea that you randomly died between 30 and 100 because you lived in prehistoric times is idiotic.
You only died to accidents or sickness, just the same as in our days.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
NT
With the difference that more accidents and sicknesses were deadly or at the very least had a much higher mortality.
Many things that could not be cured back then can be cured today. Plus, we know that certain things are simply not healthy, like eating from lead dishes or using mercury as if it had any medical use. And while some are trying to turn back time by giving quackery a renaissance and prematurely end their life drinking bleach and eating cyanide, in general we do know how to eat and live healthier, how to cure more diseases, how to keep out of harms way and how to ensure recovery from what used to be crippling accidents.
The higher life expectancy is not some miracle development, that's a given. If it was, I guess the Central African Republic would have a comparable life expectancy as Japan. It's basically modern medicine that's the difference.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I may point out, members of a species who are not "average" affect the genetics of the whole species. Look at any species where one gender vastly outnumbers the other for an example. Among humans, the older ones have long provided knowledge that could be useful, such as a deeper knowledge of migration routes, weather, and unusual species.
Nevertheless, the population is regressing to the mean.
So the model of predicting age due to brain metabolism was based on men's brains.
Imagine attempting to get funding and publishing study city Negro brains age 10% faster than European brains. Or Oriental process math at two level above whites.
As long as the truth is PC correct, then you get funding and publishing and citations.
Usually PC correct being white males are horrid.
I'll drink to that.
and the scientists just did not read the memo explaining this. I think for this serious but not grave act of oppression we shall remove their white privilege by castrating, taring and then hunting them to the city limits...
This comment scrambled my brain with cancer.
At least this explains their childish behavior.
GP is just flat wrong. He likes to post that incorrect fact.
It is true that a lucky few always lived to old age. But the death rate was high throughout their lives. Particularly high for infants, but high for everyone at every age. Especially child bearing years for women.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Simple, if you just use half a brain at a time then you can certainly last a long time.
Perhaps the test was skewed by including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , who has the brain and voice of a six-year-old.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Could this be why they don't seem to be capable of a mature life perspective?