Male Brains Worse Than Female Brains at Memorization

So your boyfriend didn't remember your birthday, or your anniversary.

Don't fume. Just be grateful that he didn't forget you. A new study in JAMA Neurology confirms that his memory is poor. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic show some facts that prove why men have poorer memories than women, according to huffingtonpost.

Studying the cognitive functioning of 1,246 men and women aged 30 to 95 over eight years, researchers found that the memory as well as the brain's volume declines with age in both men as well as women. Yet, men had poorer memories and lower hippocampal volumes than women, while the differences were more pronounced over the age of 40 for men and over 60 for women.

On the whole, age brings declining memories with it. Yet, the volume of the hippocampus, which is that area of the brain that creates and keeps memories, got smaller through the mid-60s, and declined even faster after that age.

The scientists also wanted to probe whether or not carriers of APOE ε4, a gene identified in about 40 percent of late-onset Alzheimer's sufferers, affects memory and cognitive function every year or not. PET scans helped them to understand that APOE ε4 carriers showed positive for amyloid proteins, seven years much before non-carriers.

The authors agree that age-related reduction in memory is not really part of protein buildup, as reduction in memory has been seen to happen much before accumulation was evident in brain scans. "Male sex is associated with worse memory and HVa among cognitively normal individuals, while APOE ε4 is not," the authors wrote.

According to healthday, Clifford Jack, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who led the study, said that "The memory decline that people often experience as they get older is usually not an indicator of underlying Alzheimer's pathology. So it in no way means you're inevitably going to become demented."

Other researchers called the findings "very important."

"What this shows very clearly is that memory and brain volume are declining years before any amyloid is present," said Dr. Charles DeCarli, a professor of neurology at the University of California, Davis.

The discovery may be worrying, yet they could be fairly heartening to women who are miffed about their husbands forgetting their dates, age or even names!