Cerebral Blood Flow Changes During Puberty Differentiate Emotions Among Men And Women

Who doesn’t remember puberty? Cracking voice, hair growing in places where you never imagined them to grow, and above all, the realization that you have a libido. There are changes occurring not only physically, however, but chemically as well, in the brain’s circuitry. Penn Medicine researchers have discovered that before the onset of puberty, pre-puberty changes take place that result in decreased cerebral blood flow (CBF) to the brain. What’s surprising is that even though the rate of decreased CBF is similar in boys and girls, once they hit puberty the levels increase in girls while decreasing further in boys. These findings could give an insight to the different psychologies between men and women, and factors that lead to development of certain brain disorders that are sex-specific.
A number of neuroimaging studies looking at the development of the brain during stages of puberty have shown structural and functional differences between the sexes. Studies have shown that CBF rates, though high during infancy, gradually decrease during the onset of puberty. The exact cause for this is not known. The researchers know that adult women have higher rates of CBF than men. Since they were unsure of when the differentiation begins, they “hypothesized that the gap between women and men would begin in adolescence and coincide with puberty," Satterthwaite said.