Men and women: different, even in memory

Men and women are also different in ability to remember. The secret of their storage capacity lies in the hippocampus. This is the area of ​​the brain that memories. Here, a recent study identified the mechanisms that determine what information to remember.

We found that males are more active in the hippocampus, the cortical area responsible for the formation of long-term memories, while females are more active in the midline nuclei of the thalamus, which are located below the cortex, specifically the reuniens nucleus, an area older than the brain.

Elvira De Leonibus of Cnr-Ibbc and Tigem

We are all capable of short-term memorization. However, the task of the Italian researchers was to understand the basic processes of this selection of data to be remembered. They did a series of experiments on mice and observed that males have a greater ability to retain information over time. However, if they are distracted, women may have greater memory capacity than men. Scholars state:

In brain economics, in fact, every complex mental action comes at the expense of other actions; therefore neither is superior to the other, it depends on the situation.

Cnr’s Institute of Molecular Biology and Pathology and the Eduardo Caianiello Institute of Applied Sciences and Intelligent Systems contributed to the study. Together also Ebri, Sissa, Embl, Sapienza and Federico II of Naples.