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There has long been a debate -- and a living to be made in comedy clubs -- around the differences between male and female brain differences. But a new study says there are actually "minimal differences" between the two.


A study at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, led by Lise Eliot, has found that the hippocampus is the same size in both men and women.

The team's discovery came from a meta-analysis of more than 6,000 structural MRI scans, which showed that there was "no significant difference in hippocampal size between men and women". The discovery also counters many popular explanations of the differences between men and women. "Sex differences in the brain are irresistible to those looking to explain stereotypic differences between men and women," said Eliot. "And they often make a big splash. But as we explore multiple data sets and are able to coalesce very large samples of males and females, we find these differences often disappear or are trivial."


The hippocampus is the area of the brain often linked to short and long term memories and connecting the emotions to the senses. It was previously widely believed that the hippocampus was much larger in females, thus explaining the stereotype that women are more emotionally expressive and have a better verbal memory than men.

The study also noted other studies that have debunked sex differences in the brain. The corpus callosum, a group of neural fibres that connects the two hemispheres, was commonly believed to differ in size in men and women. Male and female brains were also once thought to have significant differences in the way their hemispheres process language. But large scale meta-analyses have debunked both of these claims.