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She added: “You can’t pick up a brain and say ’that’s a girls brain, or that’s a boys brain’ in the same way you can with the skeleton. They look the same.”

Prof Rippon points to earlier studies that showed the brains of London black cab drivers physically changed after they had acquired “The Knowledge”. She believes differences in male and female brains are due to similar cultural stimuli.

She said: “A woman’s brain may therefore become ’wired’ for multitasking simply because society expects that of her and so she uses that part of her brain more often.

“The brain adapts in the same way that a muscle gets larger with extra use.

“What often isn’t picked up on is how plastic and permeable the brain is. The world is full of stereotypical attitudes and unconscious bias. It is full of the drip, drip, drip of the gendered environment.”

What often isn’t picked up on is how plastic and permeable the brain is

Prof Rippon believes that gender differences appear early in western societies and are based on traditional stereotypes of how boys and girls should behave and which toys they should play with.

Segregating the way children play — giving dolls to girls and cars to boys — could be changing how their brains develop, she claims.

“I think gender differences in toys is a bad thing,” she said. “A lot of people say it is trivial. They say girls like to be princesses. But these things are pervasive in the developing brain and stifle potential.”

Prof Rippon will be speaking at Fighting the Neurotrash at the Southbank Centre’s WOW — Women of the World — Festival in London Saturday.