Research has shown there can be sex differences between how male and female brains are wired.
For example, links have been made between neurobehavioral diseases — such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which is more prevalent in men, and depression, which is more likely to affect women.
Arizona State University Assistant Professor Jessica Verpeut, from the Department of Psychology, has made a new discovery in this area, focusing on a part of the brain that hadn't been studied in this way before.
In the new study, she found that the cerebellum — which was thought to mainly control motor skills — plays a role in learning during adolescence, with differences seen in males and females.
Verpeut, who is also an associate faculty in the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center, explains her research and how it can be used to improve learning outcomes.
Editor's note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Question: Throughout your career, you have focused your research on the brain. Why?
Answer: The brain is one of the last frontiers we have to solve in science. Early neuroscientists wondered about consciousness and how we comprehend the world around us. These questions are still not answered.
Unlike other organs, like our skin, our brain cannot regrow or regenerate, so how the brain develops is very important. During development there are periods of time where our experiences actually help to shape our brain. I am very interested in how that process happens and how over our lifetime these structures are maintained or adapt to our changing lives.
Q: What prompted the study of the cerebellum?
A: We wanted to understand if males and females learn tasks differently and if our brain region of interest, the cerebellum, could be altered to improve learning.
What I found in my previous research was that the cerebellum sends and receives brain signals from outside of the cerebellum, suggesting that it could play a larger role in non-motor behavior and impact flexibility behavior, sociability and anxiety. These studies only focused on males and specific cells in the cerebellar cortex. This study focused on both males and females.