Women's brains are significantly more active than that of men, especially in the areas involving focus, impulse control, mood and anxiety, a study has found. The largest functional brain imaging study to date compared 46,034 brain imaging studies to quantifying differences between the brains of men and women. "This is a very important study to help understand gender-based brain differences.

The quantifiable differences we identified between men and women are important for understanding gender-based risk for brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease," said the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. The brains of women in the study were significantly more active in many more areas than men, especially in the prefrontal cortex, involved with focus and impulse control, and the limbic or emotional areas of the brain, involved. The brains of women in the…