Men’s brains age faster than women’s

Washington, Feb. 5: Women’s brains appear to be three years younger than men’s of the same age, which may explain why females stay mentally sharp for longer, say scientists, including one of Indian origin.

“We’re just starting to understand how various sex- related factors might affect the trajectory of brain ageing and how that might influence the vulnerability of the brain to neurodegenerative diseases,” said Manu Goyal, an assistant professor at the Washington University in the US.

“Brain metabolism might help us understand some of the differences we see between men and women as they age,” Goyal said.

The brain runs on sugar, but how the brain uses sugar changes as people grow and age.

In the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers studied 205 people to figure out how their brains use sugar.

The study participants — 121 women and 84 men, ranging in age from 20 to 82 years — underwent PET scans to measure the flow of oxygen and glucose in their brains.

For each person, the researchers determined the fraction of sugar committed to aerobic glycolysis — that sustains brain development and maturation — in various regions of the brain.

They trained a machinelearning algorithm to find a relationship between age and brain metabolism by feeding it the men’s ages and brain metabolism data.

The relative youthfulness of women’s brains was detectable even among the youngest participants, who were in their 20s.