No brain is the same but Stanford Medicine researchers have managed to put together a new artificial intelligence model allowing to distinguish between male and female brains with 90% accuracy. According to the scientists, for a long time, there was no consensus about whether or not reliable sex differences exist in the human brain. They believe the new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 20 February, resolves that mistery and will allow doctors to address neuropsychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.
“A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in ageing, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders”, said Vinod Menon, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory.
Even though previous studies were not able to find a clear consistency in male and female brain structure or function, the researchers from Stanford Medicine managed to do so thanks to advanced AI and large datasets. More specifically, they used a tool called “explainable AI”, which can sift through vast amounts of data to explain how a model’s decisions are made and which gave the researchers insights into why previous AI models sorted brains like they did. Thanks to the new model, AI can read brain scans and predict whether or not they come from a man or a woman.
“This is a very strong piece of evidence that sex is a robust determinant of human brain organization”, Menon said. “Our AI models have very broad applicability. A researcher could use our models to look for brain differences linked to learning impairments or social functioning differences, for instance — aspects we are keen to understand better to aid individuals in adapting to and surmounting these challenges.”
The new model suggests detectable sex differences do exist in the brain. A few hotspots in the brain that were essential for the development of the model are the default mode network, a brain system that helps us process self-referential information, and the striatum and limbic network, which are involved in learning and how we respond to rewards.
