Younger Brains
Orange County, CA - February 6th, 2019 - A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis finds female brains are biologically younger than men of the same age.
The study analyzed brain scans of more than 200 adults. They specifically looked at a measure of the brain's metabolism that's known to change with age. Results showed that based on the metabolic levels, the female brain appeared about three years younger, on average, than a male brain of the same chronological age.
More research is required, but if correct, study authors speculate that having a metabolically "younger" brain might provide women with "some degree of resilience to aging-related changes" in the brain. This might explain why women tend to experience less of a decline in thinking abilities as they age.
"Women don't experience as much cognitive decline [as men] in later years, because their brains are effectively younger,” said senior study author Dr. Manu Goyal, an assistant professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
There is little research about how brain metabolism differs between men and women. The study analyzed brain-imaging scans of 121 women and 84 men who ranged in age from 20 to 82. Researchers trained a machine-learning algorithm to find a relationship between people's age and their brain metabolism. They discovered that the algorithm could closely predict a person's chronological age based on their brain's metabolic age.
Researchers trained the machine-learning algorithm using only men's ages and brain- metabolism data, and then entered the women's data. The researchers discovered that when trained on men's data, the algorithm yielded brain-metabolic ages for the women that were 3.8 years younger than the women's chronological age.
Soon after, researchers did the opposite with their analysis; they trained the algorithm on women's data and calculated the brain ages for men. The algorithm reported that the men's brains were about 2.4 years older than their actual chronological ages.
"It's not that men's brains age faster — they start adulthood about three years older than women, and that persists throughout life," Goyal said.
More studies are now needed to understand this brain-age difference better and whether it affects the risk of age-related brain disease, such as Alzheimer's. The researchers are currently studying to test whether the results illustrate why women don't experience as much cognitive decline as men.
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Younger Brains Orange County, CA – February 6th, 2019 – A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis finds female brains are biologically younger than men of the same age. The study analyzed brain scans of more than 200 adults. They specifically looked at a measure of the brain’s metabolism […]