Women make better leaders, men likelier see jail: study

A study conducted by Amen Clinics in California concluded that women have healthier and much busier brains.

Female brains were especially active in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which deals with focus, planning and impulse control. Researchers said that makes women wired to be leaders.

In the largest functional brain imaging study to date, the scientists compared 46,034 brain SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) imaging studies provided by nine clinics, quantifying differences between the brains of men and women.

The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Lead author, psychiatrist Dr Daniel G Amen, founder of Amen Clinics, Inc, commented, "This is a very important study to help understand gender-based brain differences. The quantifiable differences we identified between men and women are important for understanding gender-based risk for brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Using functional neuroimaging tools, such as SPECT, are essential to developing precision medicine brain treatments in the future."

Dr Amen said women have the neuroscience to make them better leaders than men because they have more empathy, better judgement, less impulse behavioural problems.

He said that women are less likely to end up in jail because they have more self-control and forethought about their actions than men do. Men are 14 times more likely than women to end up in jail, Amen said.

The parts of the brain linked with vision and coordination were more active among men.

The female brain showed more empathy, intuition, collaboration, self-control - and tendency to worry. The downside is that emotion causes more anxiety, depression, insomnia, eating disorders and pain in women than in men. Amen said that could explain why women have double the risk of depression than men have.

Dr Amen said that understanding the differences between a male and female brain is important because brain disorders like Alzheimer's affect men and women differently. He said women have higher rates of Alzheimer's while men have higher rates of substance abuse and ADHD.

He said he is hoping these studies will encourage doctors to treat these afflictions based on the brain they're dealing with.