The brain inside your head is neither male nor female

Researchers have recently discovered that the human brain displays no discernible orientation toward a particular sex--physiological, it is neither male nor female.

Every brain actually exhibits simultaneous make-like and female-like features, and this is in itself variable, with no identifiable features that attribute it to existing in a male or female body. Comparing the brain to physical features in other species, the peacock for example exhibits unmistakable sexual dimorphism in its tail (no peahen has ever been known to have the distinctive, shiny plumage.) Such isn’t the case with the human brain.

This finding was the result of researchers examining over 1,400 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans from a mix of male and female brains, attempting to identify regions that exhibited the most variation based on gender. In the initial study, brain scans from 169 males and 112 females revealed 33 percent differences in scores based on ‘male-like’ and ‘female-like’ from 10 regions across grey matter.

Researchers eventually found that only about 6 percent of brains internally aligned to being male or female, implying that these regions under study could not be conclusively pegged as being specifically male or female. In a separate study of subjects including 18- to 26-year-olds, barely 2.4 percent were found to be internally consistent with male or female characteristics. All of these findings effectively disprove the false belief that the brain could be construed as male or female.

The factors that do influence the development of the brain are actually a complex combination of genetic, environmental and epigenetic (above the genome) factors. The research also revealed that different regions in the brain react to sex-specific influences in widely different ways, and this is not just limited to testosterone and estrogen--the two famous gender-related hormones.

As Rebecca Jordan-Young, a professor of women's gender and sexuality studies at Barnard College in New York, puts it, “The idea of a unified 'masculine' or 'feminine' personality turns out not to describe real people," she said. "It describes stereotypes to which we constantly compare ourselves and each other, but more people are 'gender non-conforming' than we generally realize.”