The female brain ages faster
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Researchers compared the activity of genes in the male and female brains and came to the conclusion that in women, the age-related changes in molecular-genetic cuisine are more rapid.
Despite the fact that women live longer than men, they are aging, apparently, faster than the stronger sex. This conclusion was reached by researchers from the University of California at Berkeley (USA), analyzing the age-related activity of genes in the brain of men and women. The activity of the genes was measured by the RNA composition (or, in other words, the transcripts were compared): the composition and the number of RNA matrices make it possible to determine which gene is working on the rise and which is reducing activity.
A total of 13,000 genes were analyzed from four different parts of the brain, taken posthumously in fifty-five people of different ages. The researchers expected to see that the age changes in women will occur more slowly - since they live longer. But it turned out exactly the opposite. For example, 667 genes were found in the upper frontal gyrus, whose activity changed with time in different ways in women and men. Some genes begin to work more intensively with age, some weaken, but 98% of such genes in the female brain age changes more quickly. Some of these molecular genetic changes are known to be associated with the weakening of cognitive functions and the development of neurodegenerative disorders.
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In other words, the female brain grows old faster than the male brain. But scientists themselves note that accelerated aging affected about half of women. From this we can conclude that the reason is not in the biological programmedness of women, but in the specific conditions of their life. The simplest reason you can come up with 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 experiment with rodents and simultaneously test how the molecular genetic state of the brain changes in women of different cultures, where their position varies greatly in the sense of exposure to daily stress.