Men experience faster brain shrinkage as they age compared with women, according to Euronews, citing research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers examined over 12,000 brain scans from almost 5,000 healthy people aged 17 to 95. They found that men’s brains declined more quickly in areas related to memory, movement and visual processing. For example, the postcentral cortex, which helps process touch and pain, shrank by about 2% per year in men but only 1.2% in women. Compared with women, men also showed greater cortical thinning and more pronounced loss in regions linked to motor skills.
Meanwhile, the study noted that women tended to have more expansion of the brain’s fluid-filled ventricles, another indicator of aging, though with less overall structural loss than men.
Despite these differences in brain changes, Alzheimer’s disease remains nearly twice as common in women. Researchers said this gap is unlikely to be explained solely by brain shrinkage. Other contributors, such as longer life expectancy for women, may play a more significant role.
