Science has proven that women may be right all along, and men have worse memories than them. Also, their brains are smaller than women, at least the part that controls memories. A new study found out that men have worse memory performance than women as they age.
American scientists have found out that men over 40 have worse memories than women of the same age. They also revealed that the hippocampus area of the brain, the part responsible for memory storage, begins shrinking from age 30 for both sexes but is rapidly declining in men.
"Our objectives were to compare age, sex and APOE ε4 effects on memory performance, hippocampal volume and amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) across the adult lifespan," wrote the authors as reported by Medical News Today. APOE ε4 is a gene that is steadily identified as a risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's disease and it linked to an earlier onset of dementia for adults.
According to Dr. Clifford Jack Jr. of the Mayo Clinic and Foundation in Minnesota, it is still unclear why this happens but one thing that might have caused this is because estrogen, the female hormone, protects the brains of women from nerve damage until later in their lives.
The study involved 1,246 people between ages 30 and 95 and it showed that there are memory lapses experienced by everyone when they reached middle age. "A decline in memory is something that happens to everyone," Dr Jack said.
The participants were grouped into four by their sex and tested whether they had the gene or not. The study found out that memory retention begins to decline from age 30 through 90. Moreover, the hippocampal volume worsened beginning from age 30 as well.
However, APOE ε4 carriers had a greater average of accumulation of plaque called amyloids than those not carrying the gene. Thus, overall, men had worse memory than women at 40 and lower volume of hippocampal than women at the age of 60.
Meanwhile, Dr. Charles DeCarli of the University of California at Davis, Sacramento, told Telegraph UK, "Understanding the basic biology of these early processes are likely to substantially inform us about ways in which we can maintain cognitive health and optimize resistance to late-life dementia."