Boys and Girls Brains Are Equal When It Comes to Math, Study Finds

Girls and boys experience learning math in the same way, a new study found, debunking the age-old thought that males are superior to females in the subject.

A study published Friday in the journal Science of Learning discovered that young boys and girls use the same mechanisms and networks in the brain to solve math problems.

While some have thought that boys are biologically inclined to be better in math, there was little evidence to support those claims, researchers said in the study. Some studies have shown gender differences, but "it is impossible to disentangle intrinsic, biological differences from sociocultural influences."

For the study published Friday, researchers analyzed 104 kids between three and 10 years old while they performed cognitive tests and watched videos of math lessons in an MRI scanner. In a first for such a study, scientists used neuroimaging to capture images of kids' brains to evaluate the differences between males and females.

Testing revealed that "girls' and boys' brains function similarly during mathematical processing." Additionally, there was "no evidence of gender differences in neural responses to mathematics content, neural responses during educational video viewing, or rates of neural development for mathematical processing in early childhood."

Furthermore, scientists "found statistical equivalence between boys and girls throughout the brain." This led the researchers to conclude "that gender differences in STEM fields in adults are not derived from intrinsic differences in children's brains but likely from a complex environmental origin."

Jessica Cantlon, author of the study and professor of developmental neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, told NPR that when it comes to learning math, boys and girls are "indistinguishable."