This article describes a new study using AI to identify sex differences in the brain with over 90% accuracy.

Key findings:

  • An AI model successfully distinguished between male and female brains based on scans, suggesting inherent sex-based brain variations.
  • The model focused on specific brain networks like the default mode, striatum, and limbic networks, potentially linked to cognitive functions and behaviors.
  • These findings could lead to personalized medicine approaches by considering sex differences in developing treatments for brain disorders.

Additional points:

  • The study may help settle a long-standing debate about the existence of reliable sex differences in the brain.
  • Previous research failed to find consistent brain indicators of sex.
  • Researchers emphasize that the study doesn’t explain the cause of these differences.
  • The research team plans to make the AI model publicly available for further research on brain-behavior connections.

Overall, the study highlights the potential of AI in uncovering previously undetectable brain differences with potential implications for personalized medicine.

  • Ragdoll X@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I don’t doubt that there are inherent differences between the brains of most men and women, but “we can measure these differences” and “these differences are inherent” are two different claims. I don’t really get what the article is trying to get at by first claiming the latter and then walking back to the former.

    btw can someone post the full PDF I can’t access it via sci-hub yet


    Edit: Also a tangential nitpick, but looking at their code I can tell that they’re psychiatrists/neuroscientists first and programmers second lol

    “CNN Block 1” comment used twice?

    They skip layer 5? (Why even keep it in there??)

    A linear layer with 2 outputs??? And then they do “_, predicted = torch.max(outputs.data, 1)” in the training script??? JUST USE 1 OUTPUT WITH A SIGMOID I’M BEGGING YOU

    And there’s a lot going on in the “utilityFunctions.py” file lol