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Men's Brains Age Faster
It’s a fact that women live longer than men, and the latest figures, from 2023, show it’s by an average of 5 years. Not fair!
Then you will not be happy about this! Now a new study suggests that their brains age differently, with men’s brains shrinking faster than women’s.
The Norway study looked at the brains of 4,700 men and women between the ages of 17 and 95. None had cognitive impairments and each received two or more MRI brain scans over about three years. What researchers were able to see over that time span is that men’s brain volumes shrank more than women’s, meaning they were shrinking faster. Brain shrinkage in both gray and white matter is normal in aging, but this tells us it’s happening more quickly in men.
In an area of the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, men’s brains shrank about 2 percent a year compared to 1.2 percent for women. Other areas that showed shrinkage involved parts of the brain affecting touch, vision, learning, movement, and memory. This doesn’t mean men’s brains age faster than women’s, just that the aging varies depending on where it is in the brain. We don’t know what this means for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which plagues women twice as much as men.
That tells us brain shrinkage may not be predictive of Alzheimer’s disease since men’s brains shrink more than women’s. We need further research to understand how this impacts brain health. Until then, I don’t think either gender has bragging rights over who’s brain ages better. Although, I’m not sure my wife would agree. Let’s not ask her!
More Information
New evidence has found that male brains really may shrink faster than female brains with age. Among 4,726 participants with healthy cognition, brain scans have revealed "modest yet systematic sex differences" in how neurological tissue wastes away.
Men’s brains shrink faster than women’s: what that means for Alzheimer’s
Women’s brains age more slowly, but that doesn’t seem to protect them from a common form of dementia.
Sex differences in healthy brain aging are unlikely to explain higher Alzheimer’s disease prevalence in women
As Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is diagnosed more frequently in women, understanding the role of sex has become a key priority in AD research. However, despite aging being the primary risk factor for AD, it remains unclear whether men and women differ in the extent of brain decline with age.
