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Men and women see the world differently
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Researchers from Brooklyn College at the City University of New York have found that the visual centers of men and women work differently. The results of their study are published online in the journal BioMed Central.
We look at the world differently. As the study of specialists has shown, men and women have significant differences in the perception of colors by the brain.
Males have a greater ability to notice details and distinguish fast-moving stimuli, while women are better able to distinguish colors.
The brain, especially the visual cortex, contains a high concentration of receptors for male sex hormones – androgens, which are responsible for image processing. Androgens also control the development of neurons during embryogenesis. This means that men have 25% more of these neurons than women.
To conduct the research, experts selected men and women over 16 years of age who had visual acuity and normal color perception.
It turns out that men have a hard time distinguishing between colors in the middle of the visible spectrum, such as shades of blue, green, and yellow.
Men's color perception is slightly shifted and they need a longer wave to determine the shade. That is, women can distinguish less pronounced and saturated shades of colors. For example, a turquoise object is immediately identified by a woman, but for a man to understand what shade it is, the object needs to be a little bluer.
To analyze the degree of contrast sensitivity, scientists used images of light and dark stripes. They were vertical and horizontal. The participants in the experiment had to identify the visible ones. The alternation of stripes created a flickering effect.
When the positions of the stripes relative to each other changed, subjects lost sensitivity when the stripes were close together and regained it when the distance between the stripes increased.
"These are similar gender differences that we see in smell, hearing and other senses. We think that testosterone plays a major role here, as it affects the brain's ability to perceive and process information received through vision," says the study's lead author, Professor Israel Abramov.