Growing up, we've heard a lot of stereotypes(刻板印象)of how sex( 性 别 )influences interests and jobs. For example. most boys do math better than girls, while most girls are better at learning languages. We usually think this is because of differences in how boys' and girls' brains work. But is it true?
According to past studies, some parts of our brains can be different in size. Scientists used to think these differences might influence how well men and women think and do things. They found this by scanning(扫描)people's brains. However, researchers only scanned dozens of (几十个) people. As said in a 2022 study, for such research to be believable, you would need to scan the brains of a few thousand people at least.
In 2023, the UK Biobank scanned the brains of 40, 000 people in the UK. It showed differences between men and women in the size of certain brain parts. About one-third of these parts were found to be larger in men, while another third were larger in women. However, these differences were very small. The differences are not big enough to form a conclusion(结论)from them.
Also, our brains might change in structure (结构)and size according to our life experiences. For example, even if a part of a man's brain, responsible for doing math, is larger than that of a woman, it is possibly because he takes jobs that use math skills. So, any brain differences between men and women could be a result, not a cause, of different roles in life and society.
