The popular myth about brain aging has been debunked

Scientists from the University of Oslo have concluded that natural aging processes do not have a more pronounced effect on the female brain than on the male brain. Moreover, in some areas, it is men who show a slightly more noticeable decrease in brain structure with age. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

As part of the work, data from 12,638 MRI scans of 4,726 healthy volunteers aged 17 to 95 years were studied. Each participant underwent examination several times with an interval of about three years, which allowed scientists to track the dynamics of changes.

Specialists measured the thickness and area of the cerebral cortex, as well as the volume of gray and white matter. It turned out that in men, the decrease in brain volume and thinning of the cortex occur a little faster, especially in areas responsible for vision and memory. In women, age-related changes were more noticeable only in a small part of the temporal lobe. However, the differences between the sexes were minimal - for example, the rate of decrease in cortical thickness differed by about one-tenth of a percent per year.

After the researchers accounted for the average difference in life expectancy between men and women, the differences practically disappeared. This suggests that brain aging itself does not explain the higher frequency of Alzheimer's disease in women.

"We did not find signs of more rapid age-related degradation of the female brain," notes study author Anne Ravndal. According to her, the reasons for differences in the prevalence of dementia are likely related to genetics, life expectancy, or diagnostic features.

In the future, scientists plan to study how changes in brain structure affect memory in representatives of different sexes - it is possible that changes of the same scale affect cognitive abilities differently.