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Women's brains age faster
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The researchers compared the activity of genes in the male and female brains and came to the conclusion that in the female brain, age-related changes in the molecular genetic kitchen occur more quickly.
Despite the fact that women live longer than men, they apparently age faster than the stronger sex. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the University of California at Berkeley (USA) after analyzing the age-related activity of genes in the brains of men and women. Gene activity was measured by the composition of RNA (or, in other words, transcriptomes were compared): the composition and quantity of RNA matrices make it possible to determine which gene is on the rise and which is reducing its activity.
A total of 13,000 genes from four different brain regions, taken posthumously from fifty-five people of different ages, were analyzed. The researchers expected to see that age-related changes in women would occur more slowly, since they live longer. But it turned out to be just the opposite. For example, 667 genes were found in the superior frontal gyrus, the activity of which changed differently over time in women and men. Some genes begin to work more intensively with age, some weaken, but in 98% of such genes in the female brain, age-related changes occurred more quickly. Some of these molecular genetic changes are known to be associated with a weakening of cognitive functions and the development of neurodegenerative disorders.
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In other words, the female brain ages faster than the male brain. But the scientists themselves note that accelerated aging affected about half of the women. From this we can conclude that the reason is not in the biological programming of women, but in the specific conditions of their lives. The simplest reason that can be thought of here is stress. Indeed, experiments on monkeys indirectly confirm that stress can cause premature aging of the brain. To finally confirm this hypothesis, the researchers want to conduct experiments with rodents and simultaneously check how the molecular-genetic state of the brain changes in women of different cultures, where their situation varies greatly in terms of exposure to daily stress.