Male and female brains age differently

By William Atkins
Thursday, 06 November 2008 18:05

Science - Biology

U.S. researchers discover that genes in the brains of men begin to change earlier, and differently, then the genes of women. Men may need help earlier than women.


Carl W. Cotman and Nicole C. Berchtold, both from the University of California at Irvine, studied the brains of 55 “cognitively intact” people who had died between the ages of 20 and 99 years.

They looked at these parts of the brain: hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, superior-frontal gyrus, and postcentral gyrus.

Specifically, they were interested in a molecule of ribonucleic acid (RNA) called messenger RNA (mRNA).

It carries coding information to ribosomes (places where protein synthesis takes place). The more active the mRNA means the more instructions are used for the building of proteins

Cotman and Berchtold found that the activity of genes in men’s brains begin to change earlier than the ones in women’s brains. And, after both male and female brains begin changing with age, the types of changes were different, too.

Their paper “Gene expression changes in the course of normal brain aging are sexually dimorphic” summarizing the results of their work is found in the October 7, 2008 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Page two continues the discussion of brain differences in males and females with age.