Researchers conducting a study on the human brain found little difference between those of men and women.
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study detailed brain scans from more than 1,400 people between the ages of 13 and 85. While the researchers found differing characteristics in men and women's brains, there was nothing to suggest the brains themselves were male or female.
"There is no one type of male brain or female brain," study lead author Daphna Joel, a behavioral neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, told Science Magazine. "There is no sense in talking about male nature and female nature.
"There is no one person that has all the male characteristics and another person that has all the female characteristics. Or if they exist they are really, really rare to find."
In all, the researchers identified 29 regions of the brain that differed between men and women, according to New Scientist. However, more than 90 percent of all brains - male or female - did not have only characteristics of one gender or the other.
"The study is very helpful in providing biological support for something that we've known for some time - that gender isn't binary," Meg John Barker, a psychologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K. not involved in the study, told New Scientist. "It's a shame that people's experience alone isn't enough for us to recognize as a society that non-binary gender is legitimate.
"We need to start thinking a lot more carefully about how much weight we give to gender as a defining feature of human beings, and stop asking for it in situations where it simply isn't relevant."
